Preliminary results of the 2009 Survey of MLA Personnel Characteristics

Shared productivity applications like Google Docs have become commonplace in libraries, but there are many other free, web-based resources that librarians can use for staff management and collaboration. Library staff at BGSU have been using applications such as Dropbox, Hiveminder, and Floorplanner, as well as many others, for such tasks. We will…[Read more]

Given the unique cultural artifacts and ephemera contained in music libraries, music librarians spend much of our time concerned with the description of materials that fall outside the mainstream expectations of descriptive cataloging. Such diverse objects include dance manuals, record carriers, magazines, posters, and other promotional materials.…[Read more]

During an interview, Andris Nelsons, music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, stated unequivocally that sexual harassment was not a problem in the world of classical music because, “If [people] could realize how important [music and art] are…I believe they would become better human beings.” The interview was in response to the recen…[Read more]

One of most enigmatic figures in mythology is Helen of Troy. The portrait that ancient authors and scholars alike paint is that of a woman with an uncertain history and a name marred by generations, both contemporary with her life, as well as those contemporary with ours. Each of these stories has an agenda in that each writer means to portray…[Read more]

Franz Waxman composed over 150 film scores, the most famous of which is Billy Wilder’s film noir
Sunset Boulevard (1950). The film plot bears a striking resemblance to Rod Serling’s teleplay for The Twilight Zone,
“The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine” (1959). Waxman, composer of the film, was approached to compose a score for
a television episode…[Read more]

This paper examines the aural conceptions of futuristic dystopias in episodes
of The Twilight Zone, focusing on one specific episode, season five’s “Number
Twelve Looks Just Like You.” I examine how the music director of CBS conceived
of the future, aurally representing these episodes as having an affinity with
the premise of Brave New World…[Read more]

In the newly popularized genre of opera during the seventeenth century, the allegorical
prologue was commonly used as a preface from about 1600 to 1670, with
no fewer than 98 opera prologues composed throughout Venice during this period.
These prologues, often sung by allegories and/or characters from myth, set the
stage for the proceeding…[Read more]

During the rise of Italian immigration to the United States between 1870 and 1930, the sceneggiata, a musical theater genre popular in Naples, began its tenure in the theaters located within predominantly Italian neighborhoods of the United States. The sceneggiata revolved around specific Neapolitan songs and was one of the few types of…[Read more]