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…
As former capital of Poland and site of many historical buildings and architectural marvels, Krakow has been attracting visitors from around the globe for centuries. This July it drew in music librarians, musicologists and heritage sector professionals in particular. They all had the same destination: the Auditorium Maximum of the second oldest university in Central…
Nottingham City Council’s Loxley House turned out to be the perfect venue for the “Music in Public Libraries” seminar on Friday, 27 September, with 17 attendees travelling from locations from across from country for a lively afternoon of discussions and updates. Nigel Hawkins, Nottingham City Council’s Head of Culture and Libraries (are libraries “culture” too…?), started off…
I’ve just returned from a delightful fortnight in Krakow, part business, part holiday. The business part, thanks to Cambridge University Library, and the Music Libraries Trust, was spent at IAML’s annual congress. Having been involved with IAML (UK & Ireland) for some years on various committees, I, along with the rest of the UL and Pendlebury team, have…