This post was written for my Bibliography & Research in Music (MUTH 65200) course at Ithaca College. I will be posting eight reflections from the class here throughout the course of the semester. You can find the other posts under the category Bib Class Reflections.

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Readings

1. How streaming media could threaten the mission of libraries, Kolowich (2014)
2.  Only in America: The Unique Status of Sound Recordings under U.S. Copyright Law and How It Threatens Our Audio Heritage, Brooks (2009)
3. Belfer Cylinders Digital Collection

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REFLECTION ON THE READINGS

The readings this week all had to do with copyright as it relates to recordings. The proliferation of recordings in only digital formats, as we find out from Steve Kolowich, has changed the abilities of libraries to collect resources. Tim Brooks explains how the antiquated copyright laws on recordings before 1972 keep scholars from being able to copy and reproduce important old recordings. The Balfer Cylinders Digital Collection provides access online to the music which, in many cases, can’t be heard anywhere else except this archived collection. In their ‘Digital Project Intellectual Property Statement,’ the digital collection makes clear the contents are only available for reasons falling within the scope of fair use. Distribution and reproduction is only allowed with written permissions of the rights holders.

The tension surrounding copyright in light of new possibilities in the digital age reminds me of other recent developments in areas like accommodation and ride sharing. Even once, perhaps especially because, the economics and lawfulness of the hotel and taxi industries were standardized, companies such as Uber and Airbnb have completely changed the landscape. The ability for any citizen to offer their home or their car to others through the means of an app has changed the way hotels and driving services define themselves. This is the same way libraries now feel the need to redefine their role in an age of Youtube, Spotify, and Netflix.

Institutions become accustomed to operating in a particular way in order to be most efficient in any given environment, but as soon as that environment changes they are ill equipped to continue operating. Rules and policies need to change as environments do. It seems to me that this is a critical time for (dumb) laws such as the 1967 Copyright Act– Section 301 (c) to be rewritten and for libraries to claim a role as expert curators, collectors, and defenders of resources beyond their commercial value.

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REFLECTION ON THE SEMESTER

One of my pedagogy professors at the University of Texas, Bob Duke, would describe teaching as merely directing student’s attention to what they don’t yet know they need to pay attention to. I found this Bibliography and Research course to be a perfect example of Dr. Duke’s idea of teaching. Prof. Shanton helped to draw our attention to the resources we didn’t know we didn’t know about, to the skills we didn’t know we needed to develop.

It is hard to narrow down the the usefulness of this course, as I felt like I learned something interesting and in every session. Here are just a few invaluable things we learned about … [Read more…]

This post was written for my Bibliography & Research in Music (MUTH 65200) course at Ithaca College. I will be posting eight reflections from the class here throughout the course of the semester. You can find the other posts under the category Bib Class Reflections.

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Readings

1. Scholars Perspective: Impact of Digitized Collection on Learning and Technology (2008)
2. Notes on IMSLP (Dec 2010)
3. The Cobweb: Can the Internet be Archived by Jill Lepore (New Yorker – 2015)
4. Google’s Slow Fade with Librarians by Jessamyn West (Medium – 2015)
5. Never Trust a Corporation to do a Library’s Job by Andy Baio (Medium – 2015)

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When the genre bending group Fifth House Ensemble came to Austin to perform Black Violet, they also gave a few talks on arts entrepreneurship to the music students at the University of Texas. I was lucky enough to catch their vegan, flute playing, anime loving, executive director Melissa Snoza talk about how she conceptualizes job opportunity in the current classical music landscape.

The way Snoza sees it, nearly 100 percent of the classical musicians are competing for the mere 2% of the general population who actively engage with classical musicians. In a race to the bottom fighting for grants and ticket sales, we compete each other out of jobs. The far more secure route is instead to work on showing the other 98% of the public that they really do love classical music, they just don’t know it yet. She went as far as to say that while pulling the majority of the population in to our world is the most obvious economic option, it is also the most responsible one. We shouldn’t sequester this beautiful art to ourselves, clinging onto it as to only be accessible by the few learned folks who have worked as hard to understand it as we have. Classical music can and should be shared creatively with anyone (not just those who already know they want to listen to it). But doing requires breaking our molds, doing something different, and taking risks.

I was reminded of Snoza’s talk while I read our blog readings this week. The five readings all revolved around ways the internet is changing the way the public interacts with information.

Casey Mullin’s review of IMSLP from 2010 hailed the way the Petrucci Library had opened up access to scores of many varieties and provided meta data that were provided by members of their own community. Mullin made it clear that IMSLP’s presence on the digital landscape could not replace a well-curated physical library, but that it might in fact be a platform for librarians to upload their collections of scholarly, rare, and out of print scores.

The three articles from 2015, The Cobweb, Google’s Slow Fade with Librarians, and Never Trust a Corporation to do a Library’s Job, all discuss the way internet archival does and doesn’t work. I was fascinated to read that archiving was not a built in process as the internet was being created, though it makes sense knowing how valuable computer storage space used to be. The pockets of people doing work to archive what happens on the internet (via the Wayback Machine, for example) believe strongly that the public deserves a collective memory. Furthermore, the corporations (i.e. Google) who committed making the world’s information universally accessible and useful and have sense dropped the ball, are outlasted by their librarian counterparts who remain true to this mission. While librarians work to digitize the past and to download the present, the public only has limited access to what is available.

The oldest reading, a transcript of David Harrington Watt’s address at the RLG Programs Symposium, is the one I found most forward thinking. In the address Watt’s questions the approach that many university’s are baking into their curriculum to set students up to be “information literate.” The curricular demands are not ones that professors feel passionately about or want to teach, but Watt’s makes the point that professors, curriculum designers, and students are all really aligned with their goals. With incredible access to incredible primary sources comes the need to learn how to navigate intelligently.

I feel the general population (including students and professors) fall in the 98% category that Snoza talked about above. Except, instead of being classical music illiterate, they are source illiterate. And as the body of resources online — archived material, digital collections, open access journals — expands, fewer and fewer people have the tools or the interest to even approach it. Librarians are in the unique position of the 2% who do have an insight into this world. And they, like the classical musicians can either compete with each other to help support the rest of the 2%, or they can reach out and invite the rest of the public into the incredible, expanding world of the digital age.

Also important to remember, though, is that as a member of the 98% I can do my side of the work to understand the best way to explore the digital world. I can find mentors and guides, those who know what they are doing, to guide me forward.

This post was written for my Bibliography & Research in Music (MUTH 65200) course at Ithaca College. I will be posting eight reflections from the class here throughout the course of the semester. You can find the other posts under the category Bib Class Reflections.

At every step along the way in this class, I feel like I find out more about just how much I don’t know.

We’ve learned about complexities in the fields of writing, reading, publishing, and copywriting. This week we engaged with twelve different sources on the topic of printing works.

Perhaps because my mom’s family managed a printing press business in my home town, this subject is quite interesting to me. My mom and uncle would spend their time in the summers working in the shop (my uncle doing customer service in the front; my solving mechanical problems in the back). They would set and press the San Marcos daily record, other local publications, as well as private invitations and stationary.

I’ve grown up hearing words like ‘movable type” at “facsimile,” but I didn’t quite have a handle on the details until now.

Starting with the clear definitions presented in Grove Music Online helped me to get a footing. From their paragraph long definitions of publishing terms, I gleaned these concise descriptions…

– autograph: written by the hand of someone (even scribe/copysist)
– holograph: written in the hand of the author or composer (original work?)
– sources: the handwritten documents that lie behind the printed form in which the music circulates
– editions, historical: “historical edition” is music publication devoted to a past repertory (most useful for study of original versions of past music, i.e. scholarly or critical evaluation. These come from critical evaluation of primary sources which is different from ‘practical or performance edition’)
– urtext: the earliest version of the text of any composition
– facsimile: recreate appearance of an original handwritten manuscript or printed edition

Beyond the definitions, Grove also discussed historical influences, changes and practice, and warnings for modern researchers. One theme that I picked up on throughout, is that there really is no sense of certainty when it comes to music publishing. Whether reproducing a composers original work via picture, or looking at a collection of sources to determine the what the composer intended, the publisher is never able to know if what they are producing is what the composer intended. [Read more…]

This post was written for my Bibliography & Research in Music (MUTH 65200) course at Ithaca College. I will be posting eight reflections from the class here throughout the course of the semester. You can find the other posts under the category Bib Class Reflections.

Our readings this week all deal with the subject of plagiarism. If I had to summarize their main points, I would do so in the following sentences…

• Give credit for the words and ideas of others
• While what constitutes plagiarism can be confusing, especially for students, we need to pause and thoroughly question before we submit our work for review
• When in doubt — cite!
• The idea of being a contemporary writer is making your way through this morass of information

This is all common knowledge, right?

Well the trouble is that I’ve already plagiarized. I lifted those sentences word for word from the sources (and related sources) given to us to read this week. Had I published this blog post as a helpful list without citing sources, I would face legally jeopardy. [Read more…]

This post was written for my Bibliography & Research in Music (MUTH 65200) course at Ithaca College. I will be posting eight reflections from the class here throughout the course of the semester. You can find the other posts under the category Bib Class Reflections.

This week we “read” six publications for this blog assignment in our Bibliography and Research class.

• Wagstaff “Periodicals” (Oxford companion to music)
• Weir “It’s Not Harry Potter”
• Western Libraries “How to read a scholarly article”
• Beall, “Predatory publishers are corrupting open access”
• Kolata “Scientic articles accepted (personal checks, too)”
• Beall, “What I learned from predatory publishers”

Some are published journal articles, but news articles, blog posts, web pages, a video were also included. They range in date of publication from 2011-2017, and range in attitude and advice as well. Their singular common link, however, is a focus on the subject of scholarly articles.

Wagstaff, Weir, and Western Libraries introduce readers to the culture around scholarly publishing, and how a reader can most effectively digest a scholarly article.

The video from Western Libraries encouraged readers to approach an article out of order. By closely reading the abstract, the conclusion, then introduction readers are able to make critical decisions about whether to continue reading a particular article. With a clear idea of the author’s intentions, the reader can evaluate in the body of the article how effective the writing is. I am convinced after seeing this strategy in several of our readings now, that reading out of order is critical to the research process. I plan to apply it to the way I read scholarly articles, as well as books and web pages.

Weir’s “It’s Not Harry Potter” was addressed to academic professors, but is an interesting read for the student. It speaks to the persistent struggle of the expert who, in teaching the novice, must start from the beginning (a stage they might not even remember) and resist passing on expectations of their own work onto their student. Weir, rather provocatively, encourages students to skim their reading and only retain what they need. This advice though, is given in the context of his class which teaches students how to read by helping them explore the purpose for reading. To entertain is not the same as to inform, and the writing of each of these purposes will differ dramatically. The clarification seems obvious, but was never explicitly discussed in any of my courses in my undergraduate education. Having the permission from Weir to approach a scholarly article differently than a novel will certainly speed up my research process and cut down on the guilt a feel when I pass over entire chapters of an author’s work.

The final three articles all use Jeffrey Beall’s specific experience to discuss the general problem of predatory publishing in an open-access environment. I did not know much about this issue before I read these articles, and feel both surprised and not surprised that predatory publishing is a threat to the community of academic scholars. [Read more…]

This post was written for my Bibliography & Research in Music (MUTH 65200) course at Ithaca College. I will be posting eight reflections from the class here throughout the course of the semester. You can find the other posts under the category Bib Class Reflections.

Reading Reflection

The four readings for our blog this week all have to do with personal relationships to reading and writing. And because they are grouped together for this assignment, I think our instructor is hinting at their relationship to each other.

Reading and writing is inextricably linked to each other, and inextricably liked to our lives. It is safe to say that no matter what field we journey into, reading and writing will be a part of it.

As someone who wants to teach, research, and perform I know that continual learning will be a big part of my process. I will need to stay up to date on matters of performance practice, music history, music theory, pedagogy, human learning, and business. I need to read those resources well to glean their meaning, evaluate their relevance, and to respond intelligently. Part of the continual learning process is also documenting what I do, critically reflect on my own actions, edit my work, and put a stake in the ground that indicates my understanding and insights via writing.

Much like I need to build skills in order to play my violin well in order to perform and teach, I need to build skills in reading and wiring in order to read and write well in order to perform, teach and do research. [Read more…]

This post was written for my Bibliography & Research in Music (MUTH 65200) course at Ithaca College. I will be posting eight reflections from the class here throughout the course of the semester. You can find the other posts under the category Bib Class Reflections.

Reading Reflection

I found “The Prime Difficulty: What Is My Subject” to be the most provoking of the three readings we were assigned. Jacques Barzun suggests that the “subject exists only when the object is finished,” but also that the final object can’t be completed without first visualizing, in detail, the subject. His writing speaks to the paradoxical, messy job of writing, which requires a plan but is also a process of discovery. I’ve personally experienced this messiness many times, but have been frustrated in the past with guides to research that are purely formulaic. Their step by step process doesn’t account for the rabbit trails, the necessary detours, the complete re-writes that I think Barzun would agree is part of quality research.

Most effective in the reading for me was Barzun’s illustrative likening of a researcher-reporter to a clay sculptor who sculpts only from memory. The clearer the image (the subject) in his mind’s eye, the clearer the final result. The work of sculpting, as in writing, is to get align the physical and mental through trial and error. I am extrapolating a little here, but I think he also implies that the clearer the image, the faster the process. Is it also possible that the image sharpens *as* the physical shaping happens? This would match the experience I’ve had many times of my writing actually clarifying my thoughts–not the other way around.

The research guides on annotated biblographies from University of Toledo and Deborah Knott, were, for the most part, in the style of those step by step approaches I mentioned above. But I don’t mean to outright dismiss them as non-valuable. I found the definitive answer to what an annotated bibliography is (“an account of the research that has been done on a given topic”), the guiding question, “What *problem* am I investigating?”, and the examples of both successful and unsuccessful annotations to be illuminating.

The resource guides on writing an annotated bibliography will give me a starting point and will, at the end of the day, help me check to proper boxes to make sure the assignment is complete. But it is the Barzun article that will give me reassurance when I– which I surely will– stray into the tangled web of research complexity. Burzun’s piece will remind me that overwhelming complexity is part of the work of the researcher on the way toward a true, reliable, and orderly piece.

What questions am I interested in? What problems am I interested in solving?

I have so many questions that I sometimes feel just as overwhelmed as I do excited by the idea of research. My interests, of course, stem from music education, which is where my primary professional focus is. I’ve found over time, though, that almost any train of thought can be tied back to learning and education.

Here is a list of my interests…

• Generally I’m fascinated by pedagogical methods and the philosophy of education, including the work of Maria Montessori, Paolo Friere, Lev Vygotsky, Schinichi Suzuki, Clifford Madsen, Robert Duke, and many others.
• I also love musicology and music history, and am most drawn to contemporary music and modern musical practices.
• I’ve studied rhetoric and peace studies, so I regularly study the individual, institutional, and cultural forms of violence and peace present in various fields.
• Furthermore, I’ve spent the past year slowly learning about Japanese Zen Buddhism and its affects on Japanese cultural, especially the forms zazen, kihnin, kyudo, chado, shodo, and Aikido.
• Because of my time spent participating in housing and food cooperatives, I’ve also delved into writing on cooperative business models, sustainable practices (E. F. Schumacher, Rachel Carson, Rabindranath Tagore, etc.).
• Another topic which I’ve spent less time researching, but strongly believe in is fair representation and opportunity for women and non cis-gendered persons, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ+ community.
• And finally, I love gardening, veganism, minimalism, poetry, bicycle mechanics, architecture, and travel.

I’m interested in such a variety of fields that the processing of narrowing down to a single, specific topic seems daunting. I want to relate my topic to my work here at Ithaca College — in violin performance and Suzuki Pedagogy — but also want to delve into an area that I haven’t yet done too much academic research.

One idea that I am particularly excited about right now is studying the impact of Japanese Zen Buddhism on Dr. Shinichi Suzuki’s pedagogy. I’ve extensively studied Suzuki’s life and philosophy through his own books and in Suzuki teacher training, but I haven’t read any research on how his theories on “Life Force” and mastery relate to Japanese Zen arts and philosophy. As someone who both practices Zen and teaches the Suzuki Method, I think it would be in my best interest to study this connection, as well as to the benefit of the Suzuki community to present this research.

Some other questions I would be interested in pursuing related to the Suzuki Method…

• How could the co-operative model be applied to the private violin studio or music classroom?
• How does the representation of women (or lack thereof) as composers, performers, and pedagogues in the Suzuki Method affect students of the Suzuki Method?
• What contemporary pieces does a responsible, modern Suzuki teacher use to prepare their students for the extended techniques and new harmonies of this modern and post-modern music landscape in 2017?
• What are the “radical” ways private teachers offer affordable access to lessons and cultivate an inclusive, diverse studio environment?

I look forward to settling on a topic and really diving into it!