From the Continuing Education Coordinator [December 2013]

This is my last report as MOUG Continuing Education Coordinator, so I would like to begin by thanking you for the support you have offered the Program Committee and me over the last two years. I was a relative newcomer to the organization when I agreed (with some trepidation) to stand for election as Continuing Education Coordinator. However, I was encouraged then, as I am now, by the spirited, substantive quality of the ongoing conversation among members of MOUG, something that had greatly impressed me back in 2009 while attending my first Annual Meeting in Chicago. Such a responsive membership is a program planner’s godsend! As I believe you will see, the offerings we have in store for you at the 2014 Annual Meeting in Atlanta bear testimony to the lively exchange of ideas so characteristic of the MOUG membership

Saviors of Backcountry History: Brooks Gilmore

In late March, 2012, I traveled from Greensboro, North Carolina, down U.S.Highway 421 to the Tick Creek area of Chatham County, near the small town of Bonlee.Here I spent a few days with my in-laws, Dr. Brooks Gilmore and his wife Dawn, at their ancestral home, a reconstruction of the 1755 John Brooks house, which was ChathamCounty’s first framed house with glass windows. The Gilmores’ reconstruction rests on the foundation of the original house and is located just south of Tick Creek on land granted in the mid-18th century by England’s King George II. I have visited here many times with my wife Dora, the Gilmores’ eldest daughter. However, my purpose on this occasion was to spend a few focused days talking with Dr. Gilmore about history, exploring cemeteries with him, and filling in as best I could some of the gaps in the historical notes I have been making since my first visit to Chatham County more than twenty years ago. Much of the following account is drawn from our conversations recorded on March 23-24, 2012. In the essay that follows, I have retained Dr. Gilmore’s own words wherever possible, as they reveal so clearly his lifelong engagement with this place and its people

From the Continuing Education Coordinator [September 2012]

At last year’s meeting in Dallas, I had conversations with many of you about the implementation of RDA and its implications for the MOUG 2013 program in San Jose, CA, February 26-27. Even more of you made it clear in your meeting evaluation comments that continuing education on RDA is currently your top priority. Taking this as our point of departure, the Program Committee has spent the spring and summer in lively discussion of range of sessions and speakers we believe will engage both our technical and public services members

Untangling the lore of Ennio Bolognini [Slides]

Slides presented at the 2019 SELMA conference at the J.D. Williams Library, Oxford, MS on October 12, 2019

From the Continuing Education Coordinator [September 2013]

It will likely come as no surprise to you that RDA remains the central topic of discussion among MOUG Program Committee members as we prepare for the 2014 Annual Meeting in Atlanta, GA, February 25-26. Our deliberations have been guided first by your evaluations of the 2013 program, which made clear for the second year running that continuing education in RDA is your top priority. And of course we have been attentive to the ongoing conversation among colleagues in both technical and public services, many of whom are currently in transition to RDA and are experiencing the new cataloging standard “now that it is real,” as one of our members has put it

Techniques of Guitar Playing [Review]

Hector Berlioz famously commented on the shortcomings of the guitar, among them a “weak sonority” that greatly restricted its use in ensemble (Berlioz’s Orchestral Treatise: A Translation and Commentary, trans. and ed. Hugh Macdonald [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002], 86). Even though the instrument as Berlioz knew it would give way later in the century to a larger, more sonorous design, the dynamic range of the guitar would never be extended (prior to electrification) in such a way that would satisfy the romantic appetite for vast soundscapes and extreme dynamic contrasts

Cello Music Collections at Jackson Library Support Performance, Teaching, and Research

If there is a patron saint of UNCG’s magnificent Cello Music Collection, her name is Elizabeth Cowling (1910-1997). In fact, it is safe to say that if not for Cowling there would be no Cello Music Collection at UNCG. From the time of her arrival at Woman’s College in 1945 until long after her retirement from UNCG in 1976, Professor Cowling’s comprehensive endeavors as a cellist, pedagogue, scholar, and collaborator laid the groundwork for the establishment of the massive repository of cello music now housed in the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives at UNCG

Hot Topics in Music Librarianship

McTyre started the discussion on a humorous note, asking a tough old question in an innocent tone of voice: “Weeding LPs. . . Is there an easy way?” This brought forth immediate warnings against the tendency to try and save everything. Then followed a “quick and dirty” approach: go to the MLA-L Archives, where an excellent discussion of this issue took place a few years ago

Special Collections and Leadership: A Short Reflection on the ALA Emerging Leaders Experience

“Cello Music Cataloger? You’re kidding. That’s really your title!?” This was the response of one of my fellow ALA Emerging Leaders (ELs) when she discovered what kind of work I do with the Cello Music Collection here at the University Libraries

Plenary Session IV: Music in the OCLC WorldCat Redux

According to Richard Smiraglia, he and Ralph Papakhian were both "just this side of being angry young men" back in 1981, when they published their study "Music in the OCLC Online Union Catalog: A Review." The two were parallel heads of music cataloging at that time—Smiraglia at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne and Papakhian at Indiana University—and shared a desire, as Smiraglia put it, "to show the world where OCLC was good but also to show the music cataloging community where it was problematic.