Collecting and Collaborating to Build Community: The Evolution of a Local Music Collection at a Small Liberal Arts College Library

Abstract

To fulfill a variety of goals in building the library's music collection and connecting it with both the campus community and the region, the Hiram College Library began a project in 2005 to create a collection of Northeast Ohio music. Focusing on sound recordings, the library has amassed a collection of more than 800 CDs in 8 years through purchase, publicity, and donations. Analysis of the results of this project and attempts to gather interest through social networking reveals the challenges and opportunities in this endeavor. As a long-term project, much work remains to be done, and possible future directions are outlined.The Northeast Ohio Music Initiative (NEOMI) is a modest name for a project begun in 2005 to develop a significant collection of local and regional music for the Hiram College Library. Our vision was to develop one of the largest and most comprehensive circulating collections of Northeast Ohio recordings available, no small feat considering the constellation of fine public libraries and music conservatories in the region. The library's major goal was to make it a continuous and permanent part of our efforts to strengthen the music collection and our ties to the surrounding community and to provide both educational and recreational opportunities for the students of the college.

Local Music Collectors in Cultural Heritage Organizations: Finding Joy through Occupational Devotion

“…Leading figures in music librarianship have long recommended collecting local music materials, arguing that it impacts both local communities and the nation by serving as the basis for national music histories (Spivacke 1940;Epstein 1967). The majority of the professional literature on the topic of local music collecting in libraries consists of case studies that describe individual collections and encourage music librarians to recognize the importance of building local music collections for their libraries (Allen 2007;Hathaway 1989;Luyk 2013;Stevenson 1988;Wanser 2014;Winling 2012;Krzyzanowski 2013;Moyer 2012;Himel and Chance 2014;Daniels et al 2015;Thedens 2002). Case studies of specific collections in libraries and archives have, for the most part, focused on issues of professional practice (Belford 2007;Doi 2015;Rafferty 2001) or have argued for the perceived value and importance of collecting local music materials (Epstein 1967;Luyk 2013;Spivacke 1940;Vallier 2010) Local music as a phenomenon, theoretical construct, and social world has been widely researched in sociology and popular music studies, frequently employing the "music scenes" approach.…”

A critical survey of museum collections of popular music in the United Kingdom

“…While there is a body of work relating to the creation of popular music collections within libraries (e.g. Wells 1998;Chang, 2008;Luyk, 2013;Wanser, 2014), comparative work on museum collections is scant (Edge, 2000;Leonard, 2007). There is a small but important amount of work on the holdings, collection management and approaches of specific music centres and specialist popular music museums (Sarpong, 2004;Maguire, Motson, Wilson & Wolfe, 2005;Henke, 2009;Moody 2012;Pirrie Adams, 2016) as well as a developing literature on community archives and museums (Baker, 2015;Baker and Collins, 2015) but a notable absence of broader reviews of collections of popular music by what might be considered to be the formal museum sector.…”

“…While library music collections tend to be restricted to documents (Chang, 2008) and/or recorded sound (Watson, 2003;Krzyzanowski, 2013;Wanser, 2014), museums are able to accession a broad range of materials because of their mission to preserve a spectrum of cultural objects for the good of wider society, their need to present diverse artefacts for public exhibition, and their capacity and expertise to house and conserve items with a wide range of material qualities. The material culture of popular music encompasses multiple forms that frequently span museum classifications.…”