Ensemble

Towards a Distributed National Library Resource for Music

Aims

Ensemble constitutes a strategic alliance between a sub-set of CURL libraries, with the most substantial university music research holdings, and a sub-set of conservatoires represented in the Music Libraries Online (MLO) grouping. Together these university and conservatoire libraries are committed to the development of a long-term partnership to enhance and sustain the research library base for music, initially within higher education but ultimately cross-sectorally.

The purpose of the project is to provide enhanced access to the catalogues of printed music published between 1801-1975, by implementing a targeted programme of retrospective conversion that entails the computerisation of 180,300 records from the card catalogues of the libraries involved. The collections included in the project contain a combination of commonly held material in especially high demand for general research purposes, as well as more specialist material for which an individual library may be particularly important. While the focus of the project is primarily on classical music, there will be 25,000 machine-readable records produced for popular songs published between 1860-1914.

The total cost of the project has been estimated at £1,015,450. The University of Birmingham has been awarded a £681,320 grant from RSLP to manage the project (£410,000 as a result of the first round of bidding and £271,320 as a result of the second round), the remaining costs being met by the partners.

Methodology

The cataloguing work, which takes place in the libraries where the collections are held, is co-ordinated by a project manager, based at the University of Birmingham, whose role it is to monitor the partner libraries’ performance against agreed targets and standards. As many records as possible are downloaded from high-quality bibliographic databases, such as CURL and RLIN, in order to reduce in-house cataloguing effort. The conservatoires have free access to the CURL database and the CURL libraries free access to the conservatoires’ records, which have been loaded on to an associated database, hosted by CURL.

Deliverables

• Creation of machine-readable bibliographic records for a minimum of 180,300 items of printed music, which will be available for reuse by other libraries, through the CURL database and associate conservatoire database, under appropriate terms and conditions.

• Provision of networked access (including subject access) to the collections, searchable via the COPAC and MLO services, which are both web-based and available to all, free of charge. The records will also be available on the partner libraries’ respective online catalogues.

• A project web site, for regular dissemination of information about the project and updates on its progress.

• Contributions to professional journals, attendance and speaking at relevant events, as and when appropriate, in order to disseminate the outcomes of the project and increase awareness of the pamphlet collections among information professionals, researchers and music practitioners.

Partnership

Fourteen academic libraries are participating in the project, including:

Nine university libraries:

• University of Birmingham (lead institution)

• University of Cambridge

• University of Edinburgh

• University of Glasgow

• University of London, Senate House

• University of Manchester

• University of Nottingham

• University of Oxford

• University of Southampton

Five conservatoire libraries:

• Birmingham Conservatoire, University of Central England

• Royal Academy of Music

• Royal College of Music

• Royal Northern College of Music

• Trinity College of Music

Contacts

Project Manager

Project website

http://www.is.bham.ac.uk/rslp/ensemble.htm

Content: Gill Davenport
Last updated 2 July 2002