Bookings have now closed for the IAML ASW taking place in Leeds on Friday 5th April until Sunday 7th April 2024. You can find details about the draft programme on the IAML UK & Ireland website. The IAML Events & Training Committee look forward to welcoming you to Leeds!
Barbican Music Library’s current exhibition, True is The Dream, showcases the photography of Derek D’Souza who, over four decades, has taken insightful images of The Jam, The Style Council, and Paul Weller. In 1981 he submitted some photographs which he had taken at The Jam’s gigs to the band’s fan club, as a result of…
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…
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…
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…
IAML (UK & Irl) celebrated both institutional and individual excellence at the Excellence Awards ceremony held at College Court, Leicester on Sunday 14th April 2019. The Excellence Awards are presented every three years and acknowledge activity in music libraries which demonstrates sustained good work and good practice with the potential to be adopted and adapted…
Hello Music Librarians! I am writing to you today from BBE’s HQ in Barnsley, South Yorkshire. We’ve had a bit of a hectic couple of months of late, not least because in May we took on the custodianship of the National Brass Band Archive – which includes an extensive music library. The National Brass Band…
This post is a brief synopsis of my presentation at this year’s ASW on my MA dissertation research on the hybrid music library. The ‘hybrid library’ is defined as a library with a mix of traditional print collections and online resources.[1] There is also an expectation of integrated access to everything online via the OPAC.[2]…
The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that to advocate means to support, recommend, or speak in favour of a person or thing. This, I find, is a beautiful, simple and helpful definition. In the English speaking world in particular, the concept of advocacy currently tends to be interpreted as high level pro-active influencing of decision making. IAML’s international Advocacy Committee is aiming to do a bit…
Music librarians across the country took part in Make Music Day 2018, on Thursday June 21st. These were just a few of the celebrations…. Westminster Music Library joined in the world-wide celebrations with a “Learn to play mandolin” workshop; which included a brilliant performance by the London Mandolin Ensemble. Meanwhile…Camden Libraries, supported by Camden Music Service marked the day with a…
As I ease myself into my harness as IAML (UK & Irl)’s Performance Set officer, I thought I’d share some things I’ve been chewing over about the various forms of competition there are to the services we offer. Here in Birmingham, we’re quite new to charging for performance sets, having only been doing so for…
In 2017, Leeds College of Music will be moving their music library to the Quarry Hill Skyline building, dramatically increasing the resources available to their students, and opening up their impressive facilities to the public. The new library will house Leeds College of Music’s huge vinyl archive and music collection, which includes over 30,000 items…
Despite September’s impressive attempts to imitate our August heat wave, summer is finally over. Autumn has rolled in and schools and universities have resumed business as usual. Here at Westminster Music Library, however, we do not resent the end of summer. The beginning of the school year brings with it thousands of students, and many…
At Hertfordshire Libraries: Performing Arts we are delighted to receive a 2016 IAML Excellence Award. One of 13 libraries to be recognised, the panel “noted the number of warm and kind comments from users of the service. The access to the service, including long opening hours and a one hour enquiry response was particularly commended. …
The Barbican Music Library team was thrilled to receive its 3rd IAML Excellence Award; in this era of uncertainty for public services it is heartwarming to receive recognition from colleagues who understand the challenges that we all face. We would like to extend our sincerest thanks to Professor Jan Smaczny and the other panel members…
Library staff at the Royal Northern College of Music were delighted to win a third IAML (UK & Irl) award for Excellence in Music Libraries, as were other staff and students in the College who have congratulated the Library staff via e-mail or in person. It is very affirming to receive recognition from professional colleagues to…
The staff of the Gerald Coke Handel Collection at the Foundling Museum collected a IAML Excellence Award at the Annual Study weekend in Manchester recently. With only two part-time staff, and occasional volunteers, we look after the Gerald Coke Handel Collection of around 10,000 items from the eighteenth century to the present, and provide facilities for study…
The Whittaker Library at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland was a proud recipient of a 2016 IAML Excellence award this year: an award which means a great deal to the Library team and an award which gives us a fantastic opportunity to raise our profile both externally, but most crucially on occasion, internally too. We…
IAML (UK & Irl) celebrated both institutional and individual Excellence at its recent Excellence Awards ceremony held at Chancellor’s Hotel, Manchester on Saturday 2nd April 2016. The Excellence Awards are presented every two years and acknowledge activity in music libraries which demonstrates sustained good work and good practice with the potential to be adopted and adapted by others….
The Gerald Coke Handel Collection, housed in the Foundling Museum, has acquired a letter describing the first Handel Commemoration Concerts. Taking place at Westminster Abbey in 1784, this series of concerts commemorated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the composer’s death. The acquired letter is written by Mrs Henry Bates, sister of Joah Bates who led the Commemoration…
Diana Wood was an E.T. Bryant prize winner in 2015 for her dissertation on The Music Collections of Cambridge University : An investigation into perceptions of the value of user-generated content in a special collections catalogue. Here are some further thoughts a year on…. “I came to research and write my dissertation almost by chance….
Some fascinating Christmas oddities as discovered by COPAC – http://blog.copac.ac.uk/2015/12/11/celebration-of-christmas/
Christmas at Westminster Music Library There will be a seasonal event on December 15th at Westminster Music Library, for more details see Joint Force Christmas. With thanks to Ruth Walters and the staff of Westminster Music Library.