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.
Readings
- (2014)
- (2009)
- Belfer Cylinders Digital Collection
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.
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 …
– the way librarians speak about their resources. learning the lingo (rip’em/rill’em/riss’em, controlled vocab, complete work editions, etc.) allows us to communicate with those who can guide us to the most relevant resources.
– the major companies (ProQuest and EBSCO) who own most of the online academic resources. By being aware of the institutions competing with each other we can see through they way their competition leaves holes on each platform
– intelligent advanced searching. Learning to navigate the search bars from Ithaca College library, to IMSLP, to JSTOR to Google has really increased the efficiency and accuracy with which I search.
– address complex issues such as plagiarism and fair use. By reading the law, the commentary, and examples of plagiarism and copyright infringement, I feel confident in publishing the work that I do. I also now have a more nuanced understanding of why copyright laws exist (the good, and the bad, reasons).
– which databases should be used for which research questions. before this class I had no idea how JSTOR was different from Academic Search Premier or Google Scholar. Now, not only do I know the difference, but I know how to find the mission/purpose of new digital collections and resource banks to discern their usefulness.
– what can’t be found online, and where to go to find it instead. Turns out there are still a few (read: a lot) of resources that can’t be found online. Prof. Shanton illustrated this point nearly every class, driving home the differences between what can be found on the shelves and what can be found on the web. There are also items that won’t be pulled up online in searches unless you know which larger print collections to search within.
– WorldCat! How did I not know about this before?? It is basically a library catalog for the entire world. So cool.
Oh and this…
But in all seriousness, I will be a different student, teacher, musician, and person after taking this course. My confidence in answering my own research questions and directing others to their own solutions will help me make decisions about my playing, prime my students with challenging questions, and prepare myself for even more difficult academic work ahead.
Just as the new digital environment has changed the way libraries define themselves, this new, rigorous graduate environment at Ithaca College, established primarily in the trenches of this coursework, has allowed me to redefine myself as a teacher, scholar, and performer of music.
If I could take the course again, I would like to see the following topics to addressed…
- How professionals organize and keep track of their sources as they research for bib projects. One of the biggest challenges of the course was to allow our minds to conceptualize the scope of a 50-100 source annotated bibliography. This is probably a larger project than any of us have previously done. The process of identify a topic that is possible and interesting, digging for relevant sources, intelligently annotating each source, formatting and editing the final compilation, while vigilantly at watch for blind spots or topic inflation can be overwhelming. I think it would be helpful to hear how actual scholars approach this work. Do they work on the project a little each day, or do they do sporadic, long chunks of research? How do they know when they have enough sources? Do they keep track of their sources in an excel spreadsheet or a notebook? How do they go about asking colleagues for help and feedback? How do they subvert the tempation to procrastinate? What motivates them to continue working when the going gets tough? I’m sure these answers are as unique as each researcher asked, but taking the time to discuss in class would (1) give us some ideas for structuring our work and (2) show us we are not alone — the professionals are still navigating the challenges side by side with us, daily.
- How the resources available through the library at Ithaca College is different from other libraries, and how to find the sources we need when we are in a different institution. Many of us came from different college environments and will move on to far different environments, collegiate or otherwise, after we complete this degree. I think it would be helpful to know what access we will have to the IC library after we graduate, and how we can find the sources elsewhere as needed. It would be very interesting, for example, to do a project where we analyze the differences between our undergrad libraries and the IC library (if only to make clear how much we were missing out on before we knew about it). It also might be cool to look up a city we might want to live and work in post graduation (NY, Chicago, LA?) and see what resources are available to the public. Looking forward could help begin transferring skills learned in this class to work beyond the course, while also encouraging us to take advantage of the resources available to us at IC while we have them.
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