It's been a while!

It has been a while since I blogged last, so here's an update. Before I left Buffalo for break, I spent a great deal of time in the Treasure Room with my trusty laptop taking an inventory of the Hiller materials, noting their condition and carrying many of the flowcharts to Preservation to be cleaned and encapsulated. Basically, they are going to take all of the remaining glue off, re-glue some labels and then vacuum seal the charts in clear mylar. The ultimate goal is to create a finding aid to attach to the Music Library website. It's slow going, but I'm getting there!

In holiday news, I got Nils Grinde's A History of Norwegian Music! It is a book that I fell in love with in Gettysburg, and checked out of the UB Music Library from about mid-August to mid-December (way past the allowed loan period!) When I unwrapped the book, I literally cried. I'm a loser, I know, but I never, ever thought that I would ever own this book. It's the seminal volume for research in Scandinavian music, and I am thrilled that I now own it! I also received the ornament above, and my mom wrote "Buffalo 2008" on the back.

In musically unrelated library news, I had the chance to see my friend Matt this past week, and he was telling me about his library experiences in Durbin, South Africa. Apparently, he walked into the library looking for a book, which should have been on the shelf, and when he went up to the desk to ask about it, the guy behind the desk basically told him that it could be on the shelf, or it could be in any of the random piles on the tables. Apparently, there is no system in place for reshelving books so they just kind of sit there. Matt said that he said to the guy, "You know, where I come from, books get put on a cart and then someone puts them away so that people can find them later." The guy behind the desk looked at him and said, "Yeah, that is a good idea...." Crazy, just crazy.

One last thing, I promise! Two days ago, I booked a trip to Norway in March! Not only will I spend some time in Oslo, but I'm also going to go North and visit the Ringve Music Museum and Library in Trondheim! I'm so excited!

It's the Biblioburro!!

NY Times - 10/20/08 - Donkey Library?

Cutter-ing and some news

An ongoing project that I have to work on as a GA is update and maintain the library's Cutter file. What's a Cutter file, you ask? Well, in its original form, it was a card catalog. Yes, a bonafide wooden cabinet with :gasp: catalog cards in it! On each card is the name of a composer, editor, or compiler that we may (or may not) have in the catalog. It is my job to look for the person's name in the catalog and check to see if we have an authority record for it (basically, what the person prefers to be called in the catalog as prescribed by the Library of Congress). If we don't have the record, I search WorldCat for it and export it into the catalog. If we do have the record, I insert the name and Cutter number for each person into a Word table and then pull the card out of the drawer. Let me tell you, pulling that card is the most cathartic thing because, while card catalogs still have their place in the world, it represents a move forward into the future of librarianship. I know that to most of you this seems like a boring thing to do, but I don't do it all the time, so have no fear!

And now for some news items:
NY Times - Levi Stubbs, Four Tops lead singer, dies
NY Times - Tin Pan Alley? Apparently not so awesome...

We lose another good one

R.I.P. Neal Hefti

Afternoons with Hiller?

For those of you who were wondering, the title of my blog is sort of an inside joke between me and a couple of my co-workers in the Music Library. It refers to a project that I have taken over from one of the Student Assistants -- I am trying (desperately) to identify a dozen or so flowcharts for computer music composition belonging to the Lejaren Hiller Collection at UB.

Hiller created these flowcharts as ways of composing music with computers, and when he died they were donated to UB by his widow. They apparently sat in storage, rolled up in paper, for about 20 years, the problem being that when you let something sit rolled up for that long, the minute you try to unroll it, it's pretty fatal. When the archivist tried to unroll the flowcharts and preserve them, all of these tiny little glued-on labels popped off. Hence, we are trying to identify the flow charts, glue the teeny-tiny labels back on, and preserve them. They are all labeled with figure numbers, leading us to believe that they are published in an article somewhere. The problem I'm coming up against is that no one, and I mean NO ONE -- except for Hiller and people that wrote with Hiller -- has written about these flowcharts or his computer music composition.

So where does that leave me? Right now, I have about 20 things ordered through ILL, and those books and articles that I have already received from ILL have led me nowhere. I'm hoping that something comes in that can be a beacon that leads me to the proper identification and preservation of the remaining charts.

Welcome to My Blog!

When I was an undergrad, I started a blog with a different hosting site. Now that I'm nearly a "grown-up," I have decided to jump back on the Web 2.0 bandwagon and continue blogging. I have been learning in my library classes that blogs can be a good professional development-type tool, so here it goes...

However, this time it's going to be a little different. Rather than complain about boys and roommates, I want to highlight my experiences as a Graduate Assistant in the UB Music Library, including projects I am working on and the crazy requests I get while at work. So come, read, and travel on this crazy journey with me!