music services in public libraries in the united kingdom

Music Services in Public Libraries in the United KingdomAuthor(s): Malcolm LewisSource: Fontes Artis Musicae, Vol. 36, No. 4 (Oktober-Dezember 1989), pp. 267-277Published by: International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres(IAML)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23507483 .

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M. Lewis : Music Services in Public Libraries in the United Kingdom 26 7

students in order to extend opening hours of the library. The LCM appointed its first full

time librarian 9 months ago, and TCM has only had a full time librarian for 10 years, and recently appointed a second member of staff. The RS AMD was given an increase of

3 staff to total 8, in order to cover increased services in the new building. The RCM has

one of its full time posts shared.

User education is provided for new students in most of the music college libraries.

Not all of the libraries had up-to-date guides, or plans and maps, although Hudders

field Polytechnic's Music Library guide has a very helpful map. GSMD gives students instruction in the use of the computerised catalogue, as well as detailed written explan ations.

There is a variety of practice in the music colleges with regard to library committees

and library representation on academic boards. In some cases the librarian chairs the

library committee, and in others a senior administrative officer takes that role. Only

rarely are library staff involved on orchestral concert planning committees.

UK music college students, who represent many nationalities, are now more aware of

the demands of their chosen profession than preceding generations; they are expecting more of their courses, and making increasing use of their libraries. They are fortunate

that they do not have to face the kind of reception given to Marion Scott when she

visited conservatoire libraries in the 1930s on a 'Haydn-seek'.14 One library, whose

librarian was reminiscent of Mime in 'his comings and goings', had 'no catalogue or

card index beyond a child's twopenny marbled exercise book (which the librarian in

charge kept strictly to himself]', and a card index in another library was defended 'as if

it had been made of gold'. Marion Scott noted a particular phenomenon of English music college libraries; (confirmed by present librarians) that 'the trumpet and hom

players usually practised near the library'.

H Marion M. Scott, 'On Haydn-Seek', in: The RCM Magazine, June 1932, v. 28 (2).

Music Services in Public Libraries in the United Kingdom Malcolm Lewis (Nottingham)*

Describes the public library network in the UK and considers the music library services offered.

The development of sound and video recording services, the nature and scope of cooperation between libraries, provision for minority communities and the staffing and administrative pro blems are considered. Political developments in the 1980s have added to the difficulties of pro

viding services.

The Organisation of Public Libraries in the UK

The Public Library system in the United Kingdom is one of the largest and best devel

oped in the world as befits a service which was first established more than 140 years ago

and saw its first public music lending service open in Liverpool in 1859. In 1989 the UK

Malcolm Lewis is County Music Librarian for the Nottinghamshire County Libraries.



268 M. Lewis: Music Services in Public Libraries in the United Kingdom

population of 57 million is served by 166 independent public library authorities which between them operate a total of 21,947 public service points.1

There are several different types of public library authority but all of them (except

those in Northern Ireland) are funded by local taxation supplemented by central govern

ment grants and are operated by democratically elected local government administra

tions which are also responsible for providing a wide range of other services to the

communities they serve.

England

In England there are two main types of authority operating public library services. Many

of the major centres of urban population are administered by 69 separate authorities

(London Boroughs and Metropolitan Districts) and these typically serve populations

of between 160,000 and 300,000. Only the very largest of these e.g. Sheffield, Leeds, Birmingham, approach the size of population served by the 39 non-metropolitan Coun

ties, the majority of which have populations of between 520,000 and 1.5 million and

whose residents tend to be scattered throughout smaller townships and communities

with maybe only one or two centres of concentrated urban population.

Scotland and Wales

Scotland and Wales, while large in area, are relatively sparsely populated. In Wales,

four urban library authorities serve populations which average 68,500 residents while

the eight non-metropolitan Counties serve populations of between 113,000 and

443,000. In Scotland some 41 Councils serve populations ranging between 40,000 and

210,000 with the exception of the two major cities of Glasgow (715,000) and Edinburgh (440,000) and the three small councils which serve the tiny scattered communities on

the islands off the north and north-west coasts of the mainland.

Northern Ireland

Public Libraries in Northern Ireland are administered on a different basis from those in

the rest of the United Kingdom but the net effect to the public is no different from else

where in the country and the five Library and Education Boards which operate the

public library system each provide a service to between 250,000 and 350,000 people and

offer a service to the public not unlike that provided by non-metropolitan Counties in

England, though on a somewhat smaller scale.

Music Services

Music services of some description are provided by all public library authorities in the UK and although the quality of provision can vary from the excellent to the not-so-good, it is true to say that everyone living in the country has access to at least a basic collec

tion of printed music and music literature which can be borrowed free of charge for

home use, and (in all but two authorities) to a music sound recordings service. In this

respect the United Kingdom is richly served by its public libraries.

1 Statistics taken from Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, Public Library Statistics: 1987-88 Actuals. London: CIPFA, 1988. ISSN 0309-6629.



M. Lewis: Music Services in Public Libraries in the United Kingdom 269

It is not possible in a brief survey such as this to do more than point out major trends

and developments, nor is it possible to describe the wide variety and standards of music

services found in all public service points and so for the purposes of this overview of the

UK scene I have tried to describe the types of services to be found in many of the central

music collections which the larger authorities operate.

Reference Services

The last ten years have seen a revolution in the development of information and refer

ence services in the majority of public music library services. In the last survey of

UK public music libraries in Fontes in 1978/2,2 Roger Cmdge looked forward to the

impending publication of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians to replace the previous edition of 1954 which even then was considerably out of date. Since

its publication in 1981, the New Grove has proved its worth by becoming one of

the most used reference works in UK music libraries and its spin-off volumes of recent

years covering Musical Instruments, fazz and American Music have proved to be

worthy successors and will be found on the shelves of most music libraries.

Of equal importance in its impact on UK public music librarianship was the publica

tion between 1981 and 1987 of the Catalogue of Printed Music in the British Library to 1980 (CPM). Although an expensive item to acquire, those music libraries which have

purchased CPM have been able to transform the quality of the service they offer through

having immediate access to a wealth of bibliographic data which has never been avail

able to them on anything like this scale before. As will be seen later, the publication of

CPM has also had a considerable impact on the ability of libraries to borrow material

which was previously unobtainable, and of its many other advantages, the title listings

in CPM have saved many a music librarian from hours of wasted energy in trying to

identify a work where composer information was mistaken or unknown.

The British Library has published the British Catalogue of Music (BCM) since 1957 but its value was always limited by the fact that it only contained information on items

received by the British Library on copyright deposit and hence excluded a certain

amount of music with foreign imprints. It also excluded almost all popular music and

had never been cumulated, thus necessitating extremely time-consuming searches of up to 30 volumes for any particular item. Although BCM 1957—1985 was published in

1988 in a cumulated hard-copy edition,3 this has not been widely purchased by public libraries as all that the majority of these wanted was a cumulated index and the cost of a

complete cumulation of an item which was already in their collections could not be

justified in these times of financial stringency. However, since 1981 BCM had already

increased its value by extending its coverage to include popular music and items with

foreign imprints purchased by the British Library Music Library thus vastly increasing

its value both as a finding tool and as a selection aid for librarians.

Many public library authorities now have some form of on-line facility and subscribe

to BLAISE (the British Library Automated Information Service) which since 1987

has included BCM as an on-line database known as the British Library Current Music

Catalogue and which, by the time this article appears, will also incorporate access to

OCLC records. Through these on-line facilities, public libraries can also access RILM

via DIALOG. It can be seen that information technology is increasingly coming to the

aid of the public music librarian and we are all looking forward to CPM and the National

Discography4 coming on-line in the 1990's.

2 Roger Crudge, 'Public Libraries', in: Fontes Anis Musicae, 1978, 3, p. 234—237. 3 British Catalogue of Music 1957—1985. London: Bowker-Saur, 1988. ISBN 0-86291-395-0. 4 Malcolm Tibber, 'The National Discography Ltd', in: Brio, 1986, 23/1, p. 22—25.




UK public libraries have a long tradition of collecting bibliographies of monograph materials and most music libraries have access to an adequate range of these to identify this type of material. Details of the majority of books currently available have tradition

ally been found in Whitaker's British Books In Print and Bowker's Books In Print (the US equivalent), but the recent introduction into the UK of these two sources on CD

ROM (called respectively Bookbank and Books In Print Plus) has been an innovation both appreciated and much exploited by music librarians who have access to these data

bases in this format as opposed to hard copy or fiche.

The lack of any information source equivalent to BBIP or BIP for printed music was a

serious problem for many years and the publication of the Music Publishers' Associa

tion Printed Music Catalogue on Microfiche5 in 1981 greatly increased the ability of music librarians to trace both serious and popular music, which is currently in-print and available through UK publishers and suppliers. Although not yet totally com

prehensive, the usefulness of this catalogue, which is edited by Brian Redfem,

published twice a year and affectionately known as the 'MPA fiche', is an increasingly valuable source of information for the music librarian on the current availability of

printed music in the UK.

Music periodical holdings in the UK had never been adequately listed until 1985 when IAML (UK) in association with the British Library Association published the British Union Catalogue of Music Periodicals.6 This has proved its worth over the years in enabling UK holdings of music periodicals to be more readily accessible. It is true to

say, however, that the range of periodicals held in most UK public music libraries is still fairly limited with only the largest taking more than 20 titles. Those titles which are taken, particularly those covering popular music, are often as much used by librarians

as selection tools as for making a wider range of musical information available to the

public. This says much about the still woeful lack of bibliographic control of popular music materials which prevails in this country, although the publication in 1988 of the first volume of POMPI1 — a national index of periodical holdings on the performance and production of popular music and jazz — is an encouraging sign of future activity in this field.

Most music libraries will have a wide variety of other reference works, ranging from

thematic catalogues to directories and encyclopedias on specific topics through to

repertory lists for individual instruments and other libraries should be libraries' cata

logues, such as the thirteen-volume Catalogue of the Music Library of the British

Broadcasting Corporation which covers opera, songs, choral works, chamber music,

piano and organ music, and, the most recent addition, the four volumes of the

orchestral catalogue which was published in 1982.

Information Services

Public music libraries in the UK are geared to providing a mixture of lending, reference

and information services to any member of the public who wishes to use the library.

Although in practice it is sometimes difficult to detect an absolute difference between reference and information services, it is a distinctive feature of many music libraries

5 Details available from The Music Publishers' Association Ltd, Kingsway House, 103, Kingsway, London WC2B 6QX. 6 Anthony Hodges, The British Union Catalogue of Music Periodicals. London: Library Association, 1985. ISBN 0-85365-517-0. 7 Chris Clark and Andy Linehan, POMPI: Popular Music Periodicals Index. London: British Library, 1988. ISSN 0951-1318.




that they aim to collect an eclectic range of information sources in order to satisfy

enquiries which very often come from people with no especial interest in music but

who need an answer to an enquiry which can only be satisfied by a specialist music

information service.

General information about many aspects of serious music in the United Kingdom is

well served by the British Music Yearbook8 (an annual volume now in its 15th year of

publication) and by the British Music Education Yearbook9 while the Music Week

Directory10 covers information sources in the world of popular music and the recording

industry. As has been demonstrated in a recent study11 enquiries about popular music and in

particular about popular songs are probably the most frequent enquiries encountered in

public music libraries. The lack of any adequate index to popular songs in currently

available anthologies is keenly felt by public music librarians to be one of the largest gaps in music bibliography and there is much wasteful duplication of effort around the

country in the compilation of such indexes by individual librarians. IAML (UK) is

taking an interest in this aspect of music bibliography and it is hoped its efforts will lead to the creation of a system which will make this information more widely and more

effectively available. Information about the availability of individual popular songs is a type of enquiry

which takes up a lot of the music librarian's time, but such enquiries have been facili tated somewhat in the last few years with the publication of a new edition of Lowe's

Directory of Popular Music12 and by the publication of the BBC Popular Music Song

Index. Both of these are valuable in that as long as the publisher of a song can be traced,

and that publisher's archive is still in existence, there is a reasonable chance that the

publisher will be able to supply an officially authorised photocopy of the song if it is

currently out-of-print, as is so often the case nowadays.

To an extent, the types of enquiries which the public music librarian is faced with

daily are almost infinite — or at least seem so! Information on film and television theme

music, the music used in television commercials, recordings which have been in the

charts over the last 30 years, addresses of local music teachers and the fan clubs of popu

lar music artists etc., are the staple diet of the music librarian's daily round. The ability to answer these types of enquiry successfully can be used as a good test of the effective

ness of a music library's service, and also as a test of the ingenuity of individual music librarians in obtaining accurate information from sources which ten or fifteen years ago

would have been considered to be outside such a specialist's remit.

Lending Services

The loan of printed music, books and sound recordings is the most important single

function of music libraries in the public sector. Although charges are frequently made

for the loan of sound recordings, under current library legislation no such charges can be

made for the lending of books and single copies of printed music. Loan periods in

virtually all music libraries are either for three or four weeks, although materials may

8 Marianne Barton, British Music Yearbook. London: Rhinegold, annual. ISSN 0306-5928. 9 Marianne Barton, British Music Education Yearbook. London: Rhinegold, annual. ISSN 0266-2329. 10 Details of Music Week publications are available from Music Week, 23—27 Tudor Street, London EC4Y

OHR. H Gillian Greensmith, The Prospective Role of the Institute of Popular Music as a Resource and Information

Centre for Music Librarians. Unpublished Master's dissertation, Loughborough University of Technology, 1988.

Summarised in Brio, 1989, 26/1. 12 Leslie Lowe, Directory of Popular Music 1900—1980. Droitwich: Peterson, 2nded. 1986. ISBN 0-904702-02-2.




usually be retained beyond this period provided the item has not been requested by other borrowers. All music libraries offer the facility for borrowers to reserve material

which is already out on loan and many of them are also willing to obtain books and

scores not in the stock of the library either through borrowing them from other libraries

or the British Library Document Supply Centre, or by purchasing them for addition to

their own collection.

All public libraries in the UK are obliged to provide a service to people who live, work

or undertake full-time education in the area they serve. In most public library systems there is usually a centralised collection of printed music scores and books about music

with smaller collections of scores and books at other service points. These other collec

tions are often not very well developed and much reliance is placed on the central music

collection to provide the public with anything but the most popular of scores and music

literature. In recent years there has been an increasing emphasis on the provision of

collections of popular music. It is now very common for music libraries not only to

provide a wide range of serious music but also to provide collections of music for elec

tronic organ, anthologies of popular 20th-century songs and 'pop' song albums as well

as music and instrumental tutors for rock guitarists and synthesizer players.

Multiple volume sets of performing parts and scores for loan to choirs and orchestras

are discussed below, but it should be noted here that these services are normally pro vided free of charge and that loan periods are not fixed but are tailored to the require ments of the organisation performing the work, and will thus depend on the length of

time needed in each individual case to rehearse the work and when the performance is

due to take place. Because of this, loan periods may be as short as two weeks but, for

more musically demanding works, may be as long as nine months or a year.

Cooperation, Interlending and the Provision of Sets of Performance Materials

One of the most distinctive features of the UK public library system is the level and

sophistication of its interlending services. Although each of the 166 public library authorities operates an independent lending library service, each of them has access to the lending resources of other library authorities through a network of 10 Regional Library Bureaux which coordinate interlending between libraries in the various regions of the country. In addition, each authority has direct access to the 115,000 scores avail able for loan from the Music Section of the British Library Document Supply Centre

(BLDSC). Supplementing these formal arrangements there is also a strong tradition of informal cooperation between individual music librarians, which helps considerably with the borrowing and lending of music materials which are not handled by the formal

interlending network.

Monographs, single scores and sets of chamber music parts are all available for loan for a modest fee from BLDSC whose collection is an invaluable resource for music librarians who cannot hope to stock all the items demanded by their own borrowers.

Except for heavily requested material, the speed of supply from BLDSC is very impres sive and books and scores will arrive at the requesting library within three or four days of the request being sent in, and in the majority of cases will be available for home

borrowing for a period of up to fifteen weeks before the item is required to be returned. The Regional Library Bureaux, which coordinate lending between public and aca

demic libraries on a regional basis, offer an alternative network of supply for books and scores which are not in any one library authority's collection. RLB's in England have

developed an invaluable system of Regional Transport Schemes, which enable items to be transported between authorities very cheaply compared with the cost of sending items via the postal system.




The United Kingdom has a long tradition of amateur music making and this is reflec

ted in the strength of the collections of sets of choral and orchestral performance mater

ials which are held by many public libraries. The size and range of these collections is

indicated by the fact that a catalogue of sets of choral music held by music libraries

in London and the South-Eastern Region of England published in 1989 shows that

more than 7000 separate titles and arrangements are held by 34 libraries. In these few

collections alone, more than 3800 vocal scores of Handel's Messiah are available for

loan. BLDSC and the Regional Library Bureaux do not handle requests for the inter

library loan of sets of music between authorities and because of this a most valuable

informal interlending network created by individual music librarians has developed and

ensured that a sophisticated lending service for performance materials has developed

throughout the country. Several catalogues of regional holdings of choral music sets have been published over

recent years and in the field of orchestral sets BLDSC has just published, under the

editorship of Tony Reed, the second edition of the British Union Catalogue of Orches

tral Sets13 which contains 9682 separate items held by 68 public and academic libraries.

The majority of these sets are available for loan to other libraries throughout the UK.

The free availability of these sets of performance materials makes a contribution to

the active cultural life of local communities throughout the country which cannot be

overestimated.

Given the close geographical proximity of music librarians in the UK, the number of

formal meetings between them, except when they come together under the auspices of

IAML (UK), is surprisingly small, although music librarians in the South-West of Eng land, London and the North of England do meet on a regular basis to discuss matters of

mutual interest. Such meetings have often been the inspiration for the compilation of

regional catalogues of choral music sets. Joint cooperation on acquisitions has never

developed to any great extent in the UK although both Yorkshire and the South-West of

England have developed regional centres for sets of performance materials, which are

funded by the individual library authorities in those regions and provide centralised

collections which it would be impossible for any single authority to develop itself.

Cooperation, formal or informal, on the acquisition and interlending of sound record

ing materials in public libraries in the UK is non-existent outside the long-established Greater London Audio Specialisation Scheme, which since 1972 has coordinated the comprehensive acquisition and interlending of specific categories of sound recordings

among the 30 or so authorities in the London area.

Two other aspects of library cooperation are worth noting. Very few music collec

tions in public libraries hold complete sets of Collected Editions and Monuments of

Music but this is counterbalanced by the fact that ordinary members of the public,

provided they have a serious motive, may in most cases use the study facilities of aca

demic institutions if they need access to these more specialised materials.

The second development is that the publication of the Catalogue of Printed Music in

the British Library has meant that much non-copyright material held by the British

Library Music Library in London is now available in the form of photocopies via BLDSC.

Sound recordings and videos

The provision of sound Recordings for loan to the public is widespread in the UK. In March 1988 all but two of the 166 public library authorities operated a lending service of

13 Tony Reed, British Union Catalogue of Orchestral Sets. Boston Spa: British Library Document Supply Centre, 2nd ed. 1989. ISBN 0-7123-2044-X.




music sound recordings with some of them also lending music videos. At the same time

there were 4.75 million sound recordings available for loan on vinyl disc, cassette and

compact disc, and, though this figure includes some spoken word recordings, it does

give an indication of the scale of this aspect of music library provision throughout the

country.1

Although, historically, many services only provided recordings of serious music, the

majority are now composed of a high proportion of popular music reflecting a recent

emphasis on user-orientated rather than supplier-orientated provision (i. e. providing what the public actually wants rather than what librarians think the public ought to

have). Whereas books and similar materials have, by law, to be made available for loan

free of charge, charges for the borrowing of sound recordings and videos are allowable, and while some libraries operate a free service, most make a charge, partly to offset the

costs of providing the service and partly as a means of generating income to contribute

to the overall running costs of the whole library system. The number of sound recordings collections provided in any one public library author

ity varies considerably from those with four or five collections in some Metropolitan Districts and London Boroughs to County Libraries in England which may have as

many as 70 or 80 individual collections. In almost all authorities however, there will be

at least one central collection which will hold recordings of almost all types of music, while other collections will tend to hold a range of mainly popular music and only a

selection of the more serious music repertoire. The provision of music videos is variable, with many authorities deciding not to

stock them at all, some only stocking videos of opera and ballet, while others aim to

cover the whole field of music and purchase many titles from the vast range of 'pop' videos which are widely available in the UK.

The most commonly used sources for discographical information about currently available recordings of serious music are the Gramophone magazine (for details and

reviews of newly released material) and the quarterly Gramophone Classical Catalogue

(which lists long-play vinyl discs and cassettes) and the Gramophone Compact Disc Catalogue.14 Larger libraries will use the major European and US equivalents of these to

supplement these standard sources.

The major discography of currently available popular music sound recordings is the

Music Master series of catalogues15 which list virtually all currently available UK popu lar music recordings and which publishes an annual cumulation with monthly supple ments. Two recent spin-offs from this catalogue have proved invaluable to the music

librarian. The Music Master Track Index, first published in 1988, contains listings of

individual songs by individual artists on currently available recordings and the Music

Master Labels List which gives a full product listing for each recording issued by more

than 6000 record labels and which is an important aid in tracing details of recordings on

specialist labels. Music Week10 is the weekly trade magazine for the UK record industry and is widely

purchased by music librarians for its weekly listing of new sound recordings and popular music videos and as the source of a variety of record charts. Music Week also publishes

Masterfile which is similar to the Music Master series of catalogues but which also

includes listings of serious music recordings.

14 Details of Gramophone publications are available from General Gramophone Publications Ltd., 177—179, Kenton Road, Harrow, HA3 OHA. 15 Details of Music Master publications are available from John Humphries (Publishing) Ltd., 1 De Cham Avenue, Hastings TN37 6HE.




Videos of popular music are listed in such publications as Music Master and Music

Week as well as in some of the many specialised 'pop' and video magazines available in

the UK. In contrast, information about serious music videos of opera, ballet and filmed

concerts is far less well documented and details about these can be quite difficult to

obtain. The quarterly British National Film & Video Catalogue16 is a useful source of

information about music videos which are not generally distributed through commer

cial outlets.

Minority Communities

Library services to minority communities within the UK have been developed consider

ably over the last decade, not least through the provision of recordings of the music

which forms such an important part of the culture of these communities. The majority of these sound recordings services are concentrated in the inner-city areas of the larger urban centres of population where most (but not all) of the minority communities are

composed of people with a heritage of culture from the Indian sub-continent or the West

Indies. In most cases these sound recordings are integrated within the existing sound

recordings collections of western popular and classical music and are not kept as

separate collections.

Some public library authorities employ librarians who specialise in the provision of

materials to minority communities and the sound recordings collections in these

authorities are very well developed. Where, however, music library staff do not have

such assistance, they can sometimes find it difficult to obtain and exploit the music

which is appropriate for the communities they serve and they rely to quite some extent

upon the knowledge of specialist suppliers who stock these recordings to guide them in

their selection of materials.

Serving the needs of minority communities is an area which requires a great deal of

continuing education among music librarians and it is to the credit of both IAML (UK) and the British Library Association that they have each run courses on this topic in

recent years.

The Staffing of Music Libraries and the Education of Public Music Librarians

The reality in many public music library services is that the numbers of staff and the

rates of pay for professional music librarians varies enormously between authorities and

that these variations do not always reflect equally significant variations in workload.

While a very few of the larger music library services have from three to eight full-time

professional music librarians and a proportionate number of clerical assistants to run

the service, it is an uncomfortable fact that many busy music libraries have to struggle on with only one qualified music librarian who relies on others with no specialist

training for assistance.

It is also unfortunate that in the late 1980s, when so much emphasis in public library

provision in the UK is placed upon providing recreational and leisure services to the

community, many of the smaller public library authorities do not have any specialist

music librarian to operate the music and sound recording services which they provide.

Even in some of the larger and better funded authorities there has been a worrying trend

in recent years to abolish or downgrade specialist music librarians' posts and expect

16 British National Film & Video Catalogue. London: British Film Institute, annual. ISSN 0266-805X.




others who are unqualified in music librarianship to manage these collections. Over the

last decade, several important cities, counties and metropolitan districts have lost their

specialist music librarian and IAML (UK) has been actively involved in campaigning, with some success, to help reinstate these and retain others who have come under

threat of disestablishment.

Another worrying trend in recent years has been the almost total abolition of specia

list education in music librarianship as a study option for professional librarians. While

there seems to be little that can be done to reintroduce music librarianship as a specia

list field of study in formal education courses, IAML (UK) and the ERMULI Trust17 have

been active in providing funding for librarianship students to attend courses and study

weekends organised by IAML (UK) and to encourage and assist them in undertaking

research work in music librarianship during and after their course of study. In addition,

IAML (UK) has for many years been running a very active and successful programme of

courses designed to increase the knowledge and expertise of unqualified library assis

tants whose work is involved with music and sound recordings materials. There is no

doubt that this series of courses has greatly increased the enthusiasm and confidence of

these otherwise unqualified staff whose contribution to the success of any public music

service has its own considerable value.

Other Services

A study of IAML (UK)'s Annual Survey of Music Libraries18 will reveal that many music

librarians are expected to provide services which are not directly related to music librar

ianship. Many of them manage a drama service and play sets lending collection while

others operate picture loan schemes and assist with general professional duties in the

main lending or reference sections of the library in which they work.

Activities above and beyond providing mainstream reference, lending and informa

tion services in their own music libraries are many and varied with many music librar

ians being responsible for mounting exhibitions and organising record recitals and

public concerts at their own and other service points. Typical of the best of these 'out

reach' or 'extension' activities has been the series of events organised in Edinburgh Music Library which in recent years has seen a Music Careers Convention and a Music

Societies Fair where local music societies have been able to advertise their activities and

provide information to interested members of the public.

The Thatcher Years — A Decade of Change

When the Conservative government came to power in 1979, it promised that local

government authorities would be freed from central government interference and would

be allowed to have more freedom to fund and administer the services they provided in

the way they thought best for the communities they served at a local level.

In practice, the exact reverse has happened and the last decade has seen a period of

change in which local government, perhaps more than any other aspect of national life, has been subject to continuing government scrutiny and almost unending legislation.

Tight control of public expenditure coupled with a policy of forcing local government to test the quality of its services against those provided in the private sector have

17 The ERMULI Trust was established by IAML (UK) in 1981 to promote research and bibliography in music

librarianship and to help students and younger music librarians to participate in professional activities. 18 Celia Prescott, Annual Survey of Music Libraries. IAML: UK, annual. ISSN 0958-4560.



J. Wagstaff: UK academic music libtaiies: a need foi changel 277

forced a fundamental re-examination of the philosophy and practice of public library

provision in this country and this has affected public sector music libraries as much

as anyone else.

Any process of change creates uncertainty, but the continuous assault over such a

long period upon the credibility of the services provided by public libraries has severely tested the resolve and endurance of music librarians to resist short-term measures

which will cause long-term damage to the quality of the services which they provide. To describe the ways in which many music librarians have fought to ensure that their

services survive could read as though they were unwilling to give up past practices and

unable to cope with change. This is not true. The pressures have been intense and show

no sign of letting up. Staffing levels have been cut yet opening hours remain the same:

funding has been cut yet we are expected to increase the income from our sound

recordings and video collections: services are meant to be more sharply targeted towards

the consumers who use them and yet more and more time is spent by music library

managers in discussing and implementing internal policy reviews which have no direct

beneficial effect on the services provided to the public. The objectives which the public library service in the United Kingdom has histori

cally pursued can be identified as those of Education, Information, Culture and Recrea

tion. Let us hope that when the development of public library music services is

reviewed at the end of the next decade they have not evolved into being just quasi commercial centres of income-generating entertainment.

UK academic music libraries: a need for change? John Wagstaff (Oxford)*

At a time of continuing and increased cooperation between public libraries, academic libraries

(meaning, in this paper, university libraries, with the exception of Oxford and Cambridge] have

largely attempted to retain self-sufficiency. The University Grants Commission has continued to cut university grants in real terms, and this, together with problems caused by increases in costs

of music materials, have created problems for the academic library in maintaining an independent attitude. Union catalogues are being attempted, but often do not satisfactorily address the

problems of music. The time may have come for the academic library to re-think its role within

the library community, in order both to ensure access to resources in an increasingly difficult

economic climate, and to bring it more friends within the general library community.

Looking back over past issues of Fontes and Bxio, the most striking feature which

emerges in respect of academic libraries in the UK is the lack of reports concerning their

activities.1 Even Susan Clegg, writing on 'Music libraries in teaching institutions' in

the last UK number of Fontes, deliberately excluded discussion of universities in her

paper, in favour of a report on 'Conservatories, Colleges of Education and other Schools

of Music'.2

* John Wagstaff is Music Librarian at the Faculty of Music, University of Oxford.

1 Academic libraries, in the context of this report, should be taken to mean principally university libraries, with

the exception of Oxford and Cambridge, which play a quasi-national role in the UK library system. 2 Susan M. Clegg, "Music libraries in teaching institutions", in: Fontes Artis Musicae, July—September 1978, v. 25 (3), p. 212—216.



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