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!