IU hosting Music Library Association annual meeting
By: Ryan Hedrick
This week, Indiana University will play host to the 81st annual meeting of the Music Library Association Midwest Chapter. The conference will focus on a wide variety of topics but will also serve as a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Jacobs School of Music and the William and Gayle Cook Music Library. A number of panels will focus on the past, present and future of the music library and its associated programs.
The Midwest Chapter of the MLA is the largest in the country and includes the states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin. Attendees from all of those states will be in Bloomington for the conference, which takes place from Thursday, Oct. 27, through Saturday, Oct. 29. Conference attendees will be treated to a celebration and showcase of the music library’s first 100 years at IU, as well as discussions focused on wider topics of music librarianship.
“We’re very happy that we are hosting it, and a large part of the meeting is talking about the collections and programs that we have here…” said Keith Cochran, Associate Director and Head of Music Library Technical Services at Cook Music Library. “I think it’s going to be a good way to really showcase the library program that we have here.” Cochran will be chair of the “Looking Backward and Forward: Training Music Librarians at Indiana University” panel, which will be held Saturday at Sweeney Hall.
According to Cochran, the discussion he’s leading will focus on the curriculum for the MLS Music Librarian specialization and how it has evolved over the years. Along with himself, Cochran said he will be joined by four graduates of the Music Librarian program, which started in 1979. The returning graduates span across multiple decades with the most recent having graduated within the last five years, and the oldest having graduated in the 1980s.
“I want to get their thoughts on the training they received here and how they think the training of music librarians might differ in the years to come,” Cochran said of the discussion he will be leading. “So it is kind of taking stock of where we’ve been and where we’re going with this program.”
Another panel being held during the conference is titled “Cook Music Library: the first 100 years,” and will be moderated by the director of Cook Music Library, Phil Ponella. Chuck Peters, associate librarian and head of music library cataloging at Cook Music Library, will be part of that panel and said it will mostly focus on the history of the Cook Music Library and landmark projects, initiatives and achievements of the last 100 years and what the library hopes to accomplish in the future.
Peters is co-chair of the local arrangements committee along with Emma Dederick, Librarian and Curator of Special Collections, Latin American Music Center at IU. Dederick will be part of a panel discussion focused on the Latin American Music Center, which just celebrated its 60th anniversary.
“As we celebrate our anniversary the members of the panel will cover topics from the establishment of the Center, its collections and activities, and the current state of research on the field,” said Dederick. For her part, Dederick will present the Composers project, which is meant to raise awareness of Latin American composers and their music.
Other discussions from the conference that are focused on IU include a panel about celebrating popular music from Indiana, as well as a panel about IU music librarianship graduates and where they are now. Also, tours will be given of the Archives of African American Music and Culture, Archives of Traditional Music, the Latin American Music Center Collection and the Musical Arts Center.
There will also be non-Indiana University centric panels such as the “Books and Hooks: Going Out to Get Patrons In” discussion from Tom Caw, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Another discussion will be led by Amy Edmonds, Mount Union University, titled “Celebrating Black Music History in Any Library.”
Beyond the plethora of tours and talks, another point of excitement is that this will be the first annual meeting held in person since 2019. The Midwest MLA was supposed to hold its annual meeting at IU last year, however, due to pandemic precautions, the event was canceled.
“We had originally hoped to have it here in 2021 because the library started in 1921. So last year was actually our 100th anniversary and we were hoping to mark that with having this meeting here. So it’s really 101 now,” Cochran said with a chuckle.
Peters also expressed his excitement at being able to celebrate in person the library’s 100-year anniversary. “This particular meeting is especially meaningful to all of us because we had to meet online for the past two years. Happily, we can gather in person this time with our colleagues to celebrate our 100th anniversary,” he said.
This is the first time since 2001 that the Midwest MLA has held its annual meeting in Bloomington, and Dederick said she is very excited to finally host the event again, “Being able to be here, in our space, at our beautiful campus, is something we’ve been talking about for a while so we finally get to bring our colleagues back to IU Bloomington.”
Registration for this meeting has passed. However, After the meeting session summaries can be found online on the Midwest Note-book newsletter. For the program and further information visit the meeting website at: https://mwmla.wp.musiclibraryassoc.org/meetings/2022-midwest-mla-annual-meeting