9A: Reflections on Music Reference (Due to Missed Class)

As I wasn't in class in our last session, I instead did a little research on music reference in libraries. One of the first ways I experienced the pleasure of geeking out about something via extensive Internet research was getting really into music as a high schooler. I loved the process of learning to contextualize a musician in a particular overlap of genres and historical moment, and how as I learned more about labels and important concert venues I'd find new ways to understand and connect with the music I loved.

And yet, I don't really know how librarians relate to music, in terms of items in collections or working with special music libraries. How do core reference skills like the reference interview and problem-solving with the customer play out when working with a very specific type of resources? And what are the particular challenges and concerns in special music collections?

Christensen, Du Mont, and Green (2001) describe how music libraries tend to elicit requests that require a great degree of domain knowledge, often to find a very specific item. In this setting, librarians and paraprofessionals appear to do quite well, outperforming other academic library departments on the whole. However, this environment is challenging for student workers -- and whether they were music majors or not did not affect the outcome. I wonder whether this sense of specialized knowledge and an intimidating environment for student workers might reinforce the music library as being the domain of highly educated, "elite" music librarians. I wonder, then, if there is an implicit devaluation of other forms of music, such as punk or rap, and the bodies of knowledge required for those types of music. Also, how might a student musician have a different experience at a music library than a student writing a paper about opera?

Kirstin Dougan's 2012 paper focuses on music student information seeking behavior, and makes the interesting claim that performers and music editors have more in common in their search behavior than musicologists and other researchers investigating music. Across these different needs and search strategies, Dougan notes a general lack of information literacy and search skills when it comes to music collections. Given the separate disciplinary silos between the players/educators and researchers -- pragmatic research for playing and education versus more free-form investigation for meaning and context -- perhaps more education about music tools would be a way to expose all users to more dynamic skills and search experiences. Lai and Chan's (2009) study suggests that libraries could respond to these disparate needs by more carefully crafting their collections and developing targeted reference services for each audience - for example, helping conductors find scores more easily. I like the idea of users driving new types of reference interventions a lot - and for me this also sparks other opportunities for exposing users to types of resources they may have never even considered before.

To what degree should libraries attempt to create serendipity? When should librarians serve the conductor by providing prompt, exactly-as-requested scores and targeted resources, and when might they have the opportunity to introduce them to musicology research that would inspire an entirely new direction in their work? This may be overstating the role of libraries in explicitly guiding discovery - but there seems to be an opportunity lurking here for some types of programming or services. Maybe something like "musicology for guitarists" -- I'd go to that workshop! :)


Sources:


Christensen, Beth, Du Mont, Mary and Green, Alan. (2001) Taking Note: Assessing the Performance of Reference Service in Academic Music Libraries, A Progress Report. Notes: 58(1), pp. 39-64. https://doi.org/10.1353/not.2001/0127

Lai, Katie and Chan, Kylie. (2009). Do You Know Your Music Users' Needs? A Library User Survey that Helps Enhance a User-Centered Music Collection. Academic Librarianship, 36(1), pp. 63–69.

Dougan, Kirstin. (2012). Information seeking behaviors of music students. Reference Services Review, 40(4), pp. 558 - 573. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/00907321211277369