Conference Agenda

Recent decades have witnessed an assumed ease in creation, preservation, and digital access to primary sources and published materials alike. These materials form the bedrock of musicology inquiry, but modern technology has facilitated their access while simultaneously clouding our ability to locate and use them. In this roundtable, panelists challenge traditional understandings of institutional repositories by focusing on the realities of collection development, stewardship, and access in the 21^st century. The interconnected threads of archival organization, donor relations, digitization, copyright, born-digital, non-traditional objects, and outreach all speak to philosophical reconsiderations of the library/archive that affect and inform how researchers gather and use resources.

This roundtable prioritizes conversation between participants and audience. The session will begin with each panelist offering a brief talk of eight minutes; the rest of the session will be devoted to questions and dialogue. Paul Sommerfeld will examine collection development priorities in the Library of Congress (LC) Music Division, demonstrating the need to reposition the archive as an ongoing collaborative creator of memory in the present. Stephanie Akau will discuss archival processing in the LC Music Division, with an emphasis on how archivists manage a multiplicity of formats and technologies, and the challenges of providing access to the creative processes documented on them. Alison Hinderliter will address working with music collection donors/sellers at the Newberry Library, in which issues of intellectual property present thorny issues for present-day researchers and collectors. Theodore Gonzalves, curator of Asian Pacific American history at the National Museum of American History, will discuss new efforts in collection development pertaining to music and music-related artifacts and programming. Bob Kosovsky will juxtapose new archival investigation with reframing existing materials at the New York Public Library, focusing on contemporary techniques for locating overlooked materials within existing collections. Dwandalyn Reece will speak to the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s ongoing efforts to promote access to the Smithsonian’s multifaceted music resources.

Together, these topics—and their discussion—underscore the tools present-day researchers need to better understand, navigate, and use in new ways the resources of major American repositories that shape our own understandings of music and music-making.