American Music Libraries and Librarianship: Challenges for the Nineties

Abstract

Access, not ownership have become the buzz-words of the ninetiesoften too uncritically, but perhaps less so in music libraries, which circulate performance materials protected not only by sections 107 and 108 of the Copyright Law, but also by section 110. This slogan will nevertheless create a false sense of security about our ability to locate and acquire older editions of music for our clients until we begin to pay more attention, not to our own institutional libraries, but to what might be called our logical national music collection. A recent informal survey, undertaken by Sibley Music Library Conservator Ted Honea, suggests that none of the academic research libraries questioned had the time or the money to do anything but discard brittle or worn-out performance editions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. If these libraries no longer own such editions, where will we be able to access this