In response to the School of Music Stu­dent Advi­sory Group’s request to allow small snacks to be eaten in the library, we decided to try this out.  Begin­ning today (Thurs­day, May 23), we will allow small snacks that are not messy, noisy, or aro­matic in all parts of the Music Library (except where Rare Mate­ri­als are used).  Users will need to clean up any spills and they are also respon­si­ble for dis­pos­ing of all left­over food, wrap­pers, and trash *out­side* the Music Library and Lis­ten­ing Cen­ter.  This pilot will last until the end of the sum­mer and we will eval­u­ate at that time about rolling it out as a per­ma­nent policy.

 As before, cov­ered drinks are allowed and have the same dis­posal rule as above.

Music Library Stu­dent Advi­sory Group Meet­ing Notes

May 8, 2013

 Inter­ested in join­ing this group?  Email Ver­letta Kern at vkern at uw.edu

I.  Music Library Updates

• The fund­ing for the Vari­a­tions grant to dig­i­tize record­ings in our col­lec­tion and make them avail­able for reserve is still held up in the gov­ern­ment sequester.  We don’t have a time­line as of yet to when the fund­ing will come available.
• The Music Library has applied for an STF grant to pur­chase a com­puter with large screen mon­i­tor that could be placed upstairs for group view­ing or lis­ten­ing of reserve mate­ri­als and group work on projects.  We will learn if this grant was suc­cess­ful in June.
• The Music Library also put in a request to keep the library open until 7PM dur­ing the week and until 6 PM on Sun­day evenings.  Since the MLSAG meet­ing we learned that fund­ing has been approved to open the library addi­tional hours.

II.  Music Library Website

The Libraries will be updat­ing the look and feel of the main library web­site this sum­mer.  The Music Library should also re-evaluate site con­tent dur­ing this time as well.

Q.  Where do you go to start your research?

A.   Stu­dents start their research on the Music Library homepage.

Q.  What area of the Music Library web­site do you nor­mally use when researching?

A.  Grove Music Online, JSTOR, Catalog

Q.  Do you ever use the Music Sub­ject Guide?

A.  We have never seen this before.

Q.  For ter­mi­nol­ogy on the Music Sub­ject Guide, we use the term “media” sources for locat­ing stream­ing audio/video and phys­i­cal media mate­ri­als.  Is there a term that would res­onate bet­ter with students?

A.  No.  Media works for us.

III.  Library Cat­a­log Search

The UW Libraries will be mov­ing to a new library cat­a­log begin­ning sum­mer quar­ter.  This cat­a­log will replace both UW World­Cat and the UW only catalog.

Stu­dent Com­ments:  Stu­dents don’t like to use UW World­Cat as they are usu­ally inter­ested in locat­ing mate­ri­als we own quickly.  UW World­Cat leaves them dis­ap­pointed when they find mate­ri­als that aren’t avail­able here in the library.  Stu­dents real­ize they can request items but are often inter­ested in what is avail­able on-site.  Could we make the cat­a­log into a search engine that is easy to nav­i­gate?  Stu­dents enjoy the abil­ity to link directly from a cat­a­log entry to JSTOR.

It would be nice to have a cat­a­log that could search by instru­men­ta­tion.  For exam­ple, if one was search­ing for four sax­o­phones, they could locate all scores for sax­o­phone quar­tet could be eas­ily found.  Some­thing sim­i­lar could be found at Kent State http://apps.library.kent.edu/kentlink_instrument_search/index.php  Ver­letta sug­gested we’ll know more once the new cat­a­log is up and run­ning but this would likely require addi­tional programming.

Q.  Would you like to receive train­ing on the new library cat­a­log in the Fall?  If so, what type of train­ing would you like to receive?  We could offer in-person work­shops or short, online video tutorials.

A.  Most stu­dents will want to learn the new cat­a­log sys­tem on their own by play­ing around with it.  No one will come to in-person work­shops but short video tuto­ri­als that can be accessed at any time might be inter­est­ing.  These would be more likely to be used than in-person work­shops.  It could be part of a series–how to use the library 500.

IV.  Gen­eral Comments–what has worked well/hasn’t worked well for you at the Music Library?

Q.  Does our library use the Library of Con­gress clas­si­fi­ca­tion sys­tem or Dewey?

A.  Both!  The major­ity of our scores are shelved using the Library of Con­gress clas­si­fi­ca­tion sys­tem.  Some of our older scores are orga­nized using the Dewey clas­si­fi­ca­tion sys­tem but are inter­filed with the Library of Con­gress scores.  You’ll find the Dewey scores around M780.

Q.  It is chal­leng­ing to locate organ scores in the stacks.  There doesn’t seem to be a spe­cific area where all of the organ scores are held.

A.  For brows­ing, there is a list of Library of Con­gress call num­bers that may be browsed by instru­ment type.  Unfor­tu­nately, there are no list­ings for organ music here!  The good news is that the call num­ber posters place at the end of the book stacks upstairs include call num­bers for organ.  This infor­ma­tion may also be found on BSU’s call num­ber guide.

Q.  The Music Library cur­rently keeps all reserve scores upstairs, avail­able for brows­ing and reserve record­ings down­stairs.  We have talked about mov­ing the reserve scores down­stairs to be behind the desk with the reserve record­ings.  In the down­stairs space, scores would not be avail­able for brows­ing and would need to be checked out for use.  Do you have a pref­er­ence on keep­ing mate­ri­als upstairs vs. downstairs.

A.  While isn’t con­ve­nient to have to go down­stairs for record­ings and upstairs for scores, stu­dents would much rather have the abil­ity to browse the reserve scores on the reserves shelf upstairs than to have to check them out down­stairs at the desk.

Com­ment:  Stu­dents will search for School of Music record­ings in the library cat­a­log and take the call num­ber to work­ers in the Music Lis­ten­ing Cen­ter but staff are often unable to find the record­ings for them.  One stu­dent had to return to the desk three times before the desired record­ing was finally retrieved.

Response:  The Music Library will work to retrain staff to place a hold on an item for you if it can’t be found and place a search on an item that is miss­ing.  Once a hold is placed, you will be noti­fied when the desired item is ready for pick up.  If staff do not take your infor­ma­tion to locate a record­ing, please let Ver­letta know.  She cat­a­logs all of the School of Music record­ings and should be able to help search for items that are missing.

Q.  Grad­u­ate students–is there any­thing more we can do to sup­port you in prepa­ra­tion for the Gen­eral Top­ics Exam/Dissertation writing?

A.  No, most of what grad stu­dents need is just sit­ting down to do the research.  Focus should be placed on serv­ing under­grad­u­ates as they often don’t know they can ask for help.

Com­ment:  Inter­li­brary loan has can­celled some of my requests for record­ings for my research.  Is there another way to get a hold of these recordings?

Response:  This can hap­pen if you request an item avail­able at the UW Libraries or avail­able through Sum­mit.  If the record­ing is really rare, it may be that an insti­tu­tion doesn’t wish to lend it.  Not every insti­tu­tion will lend record­ing either.  You could always send you can­celled request to Judy or Ver­letta.  We are happy to look into the record­ing and see if there might be another way to get a copy for your use.

Q.  Is there any way that the Music Library would con­sider allow­ing stu­dents to eat small snacks while study­ing in the library?  Stu­dents are often run­ning between class and rehearsals.  We only have a short amount of time in between to eat and study.  It would be nice to be able to eat a gra­nola bar while study­ing in the library or have a des­ig­nated table in the library where food was allowed.

A.  We will pilot allow­ing snacks in the library begin­ning next week!    Foods should fol­low the Libraries pol­icy and not be meals, messy, noisy, or aromatic.

Com­ment:  I was really skep­ti­cal of the new scan­ner when it was installed but now I love it!  It is really helpful.

Q.  The com­put­ers take for­ever to log into.  This is really annoy­ing when you just need to quickly print a paper before run­ning off to class.  PDF’s take for­ever to print.

A.  We will share your com­ments with our IT depart­ment and let you know what we hear dur­ing our Fall quar­ter meeting.