The Music Library at the University of Washington is fortunate to count among its holdings a substantial collection of rare musical scores. A highlight of our special collections is the William Crawford III Music Collection. Given to the UW in 2014, the Crawford Collection includes over 700 rare, early-edition vocal scores, spanning six centuries…[Read more]

As librarians, we recognize that the ways in which our students access information are changing, rapidly and dramatically. The students we work with today face an information landscape that is often very different from what we remember from our student years. So much of what our music students need is seemingly readily available online through…[Read more]

The syllabus for a graduate-level bibliographic research course in music at Western Michigan University (WMU) provides an opportunity to link Frames of ACRL’s Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, as reflected in the WMU Libraries’ recently developed Information Literacy Core Competencies (ILCCs), to graduate instruction in mus…[Read more]

Think back to your first year of college. How did you feel? Eager? Excited? Maybe also fearful, anxious about fitting in, making friends, or being successful? First-year students have a lot on their minds. It can be challenging to help them forge a meaningful connection with the library. Amidst the internal cacophony generated by the transition to…[Read more]

In 2016, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) released the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education (the Framework). The Framework replaces ACRL’s Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, which had been in place since 2000. The departure of the Standards and the subsequent arrival of the…[Read more]

The release of ACRL “Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education” represents a significant development in our profession. What does the Framework mean for music information literacy? How can we begin using the Framework to address the unique information needs of music students? This article presents possible ways to implement the Fra…[Read more]

Instruction is one aspect of librarianship in which critical practices have found an active cohort of practitioners. As an important component of critical librarianship, critical information literacy (CIL) expands our understanding of information literacy by acknowledging the power dynamics underlying the creation and dissemination of…[Read more]

Brief update on the state of music terminology in Library of Congress faceted vocabularies. Part of the Cataloging and Metadata Committee’s Town Hall.

MLA has been collaborating for many years with the Library of Congress to develop the new faceted vocabularies for music: LCMPT and LCGFT. With the initial release of the terms in 2014 and 2015, respectively, music catalogers have embarked upon implementation of these and other faceted attributes in current cataloging. In order to realize the full…[Read more]

The interdisciplinary course Pink Noise: Women Making Electronic Music explores the hands-on creation of electronic music through the lens of feminist critical frameworks, activism, and collective action. Techniques and topics include composing with Texts, Activist Sound, Live Sampling and Delay, Turntablism, Soundscape Composition, the Occult…[Read more]

Slides from Workshop 1 at #mlatechcamp 2018. This workshop provided a hands-on introduction to the critical tools and processes involved in the acquisition and processing of born digital content, including use of tools such as BitCurator. Audience for the presentation was principally Music Librarians.