The Branch’s annual Academic and Public Music Library seminars were again combined into a single event this year, on the afternoon of Wednesday 17 November. As in 2020, COVID made it more practical to organise a Zoom, rather than in-person, event, one silver lining to this continuing pandemic cloud being that attendance at the seminar…
Purpose Earlier in the year IAML (UK & Irl) hosted a discussion session on music-related digital provision in public libraries. We were delighted to welcome twenty-one attendees from a variety of sectors, including representation from eight public libraries. Running the session on Zoom was also a great opportunity to receive input from a number of…
Refreshed service on a new platform IAML(UK & Ireland)’s Documentation Committee Chair, Caroline Shaw, tells us about an exciting new platform to help orchestral and choral organisations locate performing materials via UK libraries. The Encore21 Migration project Working Group is delighted to announce the launch of the refreshed Encore21 service. Encore21 is the UK’s union…
Barbican Music Library’s current exhibition, Tangerine Dream: Zeitraffer, celebrates the music and legacy of the pioneering German electronic band, Tangerine Dream, and showcases the remarkable musical vision of their founder, Edgar Froese. Founded in 1967 in Berlin, Tangerine Dream became one of the most important and successful bands that Germany has produced. Their influence on…
IAML UK & Irl’s annual study weekend was a bit different this year: it wasn’t held on a weekend, rather it was held mid-week from the 13th-15th April, and it all took place over Zoom, which meant it was easier for attendees to dip into the sessions they were interested in without having to commit…
In summer 2020, Dr Michael Bonshor of the University of Sheffield was commissioned by the Music Libraries Trust [MLT] to carry out a survey of music library staff and users. MLT funded the bulk of the research, with additional funds for analysis of the survey data coming from the Postlethwaite Music Foundation. An Executive Summary…
VASE21 (Virtual Annual Study Event 2021) As many of you will probably already know or have guessed, the Annual Study Weekend will be a bit different this year. Firstly, it will be held mid-week (13th-15th April) and will consist of online presentations and activities over Zoom. We are calling the event VASE21 (Virtual Annual Study…
Many IAML (UK & Irl) members recently took part in a nationwide survey of music library staff, which was circulated alongside a widescale survey of music library service users. The survey was commissioned by the Music Libraries Trust, and carried out by Dr Michael Bonshor, a researcher from the University of Sheffield. The survey respondents…
Towards the beginning of 2020, I was invited to assist a joint Royal College of Music-University of Southampton research team in their ongoing AHRC-funded project, “Music, Home and Heritage”. The project’s overarching aim is to explore “how listening to and performing music affected the construction of home and family life in Georgian Britain.” While this…
The Gerald Coke Handel Collection at the Foundling Museum comprises over 12,000 items from the eighteenth century to the present, and is a major research resource for the study of Handel and his contemporaries. Handel was a major benefactor of the Foundling Hospital, a home for children founded in 1739 by Thomas Coram, which counted…
My diary tells me that Friday 17th April should have been the first day of the 2020 Annual Study Weekend in Leeds. Planning for the conference had taken more than a year and at the last Conference Committee meeting held on March 11th most of the final details were in place and the committee was…
Margaret Jones, blog editor for IAML (UK & Irl), asked me some time ago to write a little about the role of IAML Historian, a post to which I was appointed early in 2020. Of course I’m happy to do so. I should point out straightaway, just to avoid any confusion, that this is a…
One of the best things about the “Irl” in our Branch’s name is the opportunity that it gives us to meet our Irish colleagues. So it was with great pleasure that Geoff Thomason and I recently travelled across the Irish sea to offer Courses & Education Committee’s “Music for the Terrified” at the National University…
As a result of COVID-19 precautions the IAML (UK & Irl) Conference Committee regrets to announce that the 2020 Annual Study Weekend has had to be postponed. It will now take place from 9th – 11th April 2021, at the same venue: Weetwood Hall, a Grade II listed building, and part of the University of…
The C.B. Oldman Prize Committee has pleasure in announcing the winner of the 2019 award: Lawson, C. and Stowell, R. (eds.). The Cambridge encyclopaedia of historical performance in music. (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2018). ISBN 9781107108080. Congratulations to the editors – Colin Lawson and Robin Stowell, the many contributors, and to the publisher, Cambridge University Press. The C.B….
As a result of COVID-19 precautions the IAML (UK & Irl) Conference Committee regrets to announce that the 2020 Annual Study Weekend has had to be postponed. It will now take place from 9th – 11th April 2021, at the same venue: Weetwood Hall, a Grade II listed building, and part of the University of…
June 2019 saw the Copyright and Other Intellectual Property Provisions Act 2019 being signed into law by President Michael D. Higgins. This Act amended the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000, and introduces some of the recommendations made by the 2013 ‘Modernising Copyright’ report made by the Copyright Committee. The majority of this Act came…
Earlier this year CILIP announced the launch of the “Working Internationally” project. The two year Arts Council funded project aims to promote relevant, accessible and valuable international collaboration for public libraries in England. The programme runs from May 2019 to December 2020 in partnership with the British Library and the British Council, and aims to…
One of the greatest joys of managing the early printed music at the Royal College of Music Library is getting to do what I like to call ‘treasure hunting.’ We are in a similar position to many other libraries around the country, I imagine, in that a portion of our special collections are so far…
If you’re down in London this Christmas season, don’t forget to spend some time at the Foundling Museum, where they have a wonderful exhibition – a how-to-guide to going to a show in eighteenth century Britain. Displayed throughout the whole Museum, this interactive exhibition delves into the mechanics of theatre and concert going in eighteenth…
While the turnout for this year’s Academic Music Librarians’ Seminar might have been smaller than usual (in the end there were nine of us, from Cambridge, Cardiff, London, Manchester and Oxford), there was certainly no lack of ideas or discussion. In fact, we probably needed about another hour to really get to grips with the…
Following on from our earlier post about Malcolm Lewis, a few words from Katharine Hogg, current President of IAML (UK&Irl). There were three Malcolms in IAML (UK), as it was then, when I joined in the late 1980s; Malcolm Lewis, Malcolm Turner and Malcolm Jones. Was it something in the name that turned them all…
We all have our copyright problems. Luckily the IAML (UK & Irl) Trade & Copyright Committee is here to help! ‘T & C’ works on behalf of IAML (UK & Irl) members and the music library community more generally to provide advice, training and updates on aspects of copyright and intellectual property law and related…
The UK and Ireland branch of IAML was sorry to hear last month of the death of Malcolm Lewis, Branch President, 1992-1995. Although Malcolm had been ill for some time, his spirit and sense of fun, lasted right to the end. He was much loved by members of the Branch, many of whom have sent memories for inclusion…