How Do I Fill My Music Library BETTER
Velva Naderman
Announcements are made at the request of the institution or individual who has successfully filled the position. Please send announcements to the MLA Placement Officer. Postings do not constitute endorsements by the Music Library Association or its officers.
A music librarian is a librarian qualified to specialize in music. A broad musical background is essential, for music of any style, medium, or era can find a place in a library. Aptitude and training in both music and librarianship are necessary.
Music librarians work in large research libraries such as the Library of Congress or the New York Public Library; in the music section or branch library in universities, colleges, and conservatories; in public libraries; in radio and television station libraries; with music publishers and dealers; with musical societies and foundations; and with bands and orchestras.
The traditional responsibilities of librarians are at the heart of most music librarians' activities: organizing, cataloging, and maintaining collections; providing instruction in use of the library; answering reference inquiries; selecting music, books, journals, recordings, microforms, and sometimes manuscripts and other rare materials for acquisition. Music librarians recommend means of preservation and housing of materials in their custody and use electronic bibliographic and reference resources to their full potential.
Beyond these typical responsibilities, the activities of music librarians will reflect the nature of the institution where they are employed and their personal interests. For example, they may plan exhibits and concerts, and collaborate with other institutions in organizing lectures, classes, or other public programs. In a conservatory or university school of music, librarians often order or rent the music needed by student performing ensembles-orchestra, band, opera workshop, and chamber groups. Music librarians employed by symphony orchestras and broadcasting stations organize and maintain libraries of performance materials or recordings for use only by those particular organizations. Librarians who work for music publishers might have editorial duties or manage the inventory of rental music. Those employed by music dealers acquire materials from numerous publishers world-wide for retail sale to over-the-counter and mail-order customers.
Librarians can take an active role in music scholarship by compiling bibliographies, pursuing research, or writing reviews of new publications. They often teach music bibliography and other classroom subjects within their areas of specialization. As members of professional organizations, they may serve on local, national, or international committees devoted to issues such as electronic information storage and retrieval, cataloging standards, education for librarianship, preservation, and library management. Within the library it might be their responsibility to organize training programs for staff, researchers, or interns.
Training for music librarianship should include as broad an education as possible in both music and the liberal arts. Training in music must be the equivalent of at least substantial undergraduate work. Undergraduates need a wide background in the humanities, for music librarians need to be familiar with the relationship of music to other disciplines. Music and the literature about it are published in many countries and languages; basic cataloging and bibliographic research require a working knowledge of German and at least one Romance language. A master's degree in library or information science is required by most employers. Because music librarians need a thorough knowledge of music history and repertory, a second master's degree in music is required or highly desired for some positions. Libraries specializing in folk music or musics of non-Western cultures require training in ethnomusicology, archives management, and other languages. In libraries where music is combined with other subjects, such as dance or fine arts, background in those subjects may also be expected.
To understand more about a standard of core competencies acquired for music librarians, you may wish to view: Core Competencies for Music Librarians and Music Library Professionals, a report prepared by the Core Competencies for Music Librarians and Music Library Professionals Task Force in 2019.
Some library schools offer special courses or internships in music librarianship. Information about these programs appears in the Directory of Library School Offerings in Music Librarianship. The Music Library Students and Emerging Professionals (MLStEP) group is a great way to meet fellow music library students and early-career professionals and get involved in the field.
Commitment to music draws individuals interested in librarianship to this field of specialization. To enjoy it and to become an accomplished practitioner, intellectual curiosity, concern for detail, and an ability to organize ideas as well as things are essential. Music librarianship is a financially stable career, and one that many musicians find compatible with a part-time second career as a performer. Most music librarians work with the public, either in full-time public service positions or as a part-time responsibility shared with their other work. Technical services librarians, such as those in cataloging or acquisitions, may work entirely behind the scenes.
Music librarianship offers a broad range of administrative and supervisory positions. Some of the smaller music collections are administered and operated by a single professional, with support staff. In large academic and public libraries, there are management positions as department heads and assistant heads. The head of a music library, whatever its size, may have budget, personnel, facilities, and collection management responsibilities.
The best introduction to music librarianship as a career is employment in a music library in a non-professional capacity; full-time, part-time and hourly positions are available in public and academic libraries, and with music publishers and performance ensembles. To learn about the profession's current activities and to make useful contacts, join the Music Library Association as a student member. MLA was founded in 1931 to promote the establishment, growth, and use of music libraries. Members receive its quarterly journal Notes, which contains articles, bibliographies, and reviews of music, books, and software. MLA holds an annual meeting in the late winter or early spring. There are twelve regional chapters that also meet regularly.
Explore the MLA site! The Career Resources page contains lists and bibliographies covering a range of topics useful to music librarians at every stage of their career. You can also view current job openings, and view research reports, publications in print, and committee and chapter working papers. Our website also has links to additional pages concerning copyright and the annual meeting, to committees and chapters pages, and other Internet resources of interest to music librarians.
One of the last things I have left to organize for my Plex library is my music. I've been putting it off cause its going to be a nightmare. I've been collecting MP3s since the days of OG Napster. Most of those are garbage quality. But I've also been amassing a library of 320kbps MP3s in Google music for something like 10 years now. I recently exported my full music library from Google (i believe it was 6000-7000 songs total). Google completely butchers the file structure of these songs and puts them all over the place. For example, I have artist folders for: 2Pac, 2 Pac, Tupac, and Tupac Shakur. Then of course there's always Tupac songs listed under another contributing artist's folder. I have like 2 dozen Dave Guetta folders, because Google put each song in a folder with Dave's name and the other artist's name.
So I'm hoping to find a software that can reorganize this mess for me. I imagine it would need to be some pretty intelligent software to minimize user input. I also have my music in multiple locations, and i want to merge them all together without creating duplicates when there's a conflict. I need to be able to dictate folder structure and ideally write metadata (i do have other software for the metadata if need be).
Just to let you know that yes, some of the customers state that they are unable to see all of their uploaded music within YouTubeMusic on Sonos. Customers who recently migrated from Google Play Music to Youtube Music will likely notice this acutely. Below are the workarounds that we can provide for now.
I've had my SONOS One for a few months and have had very few problems. I have primarily played my music library through Google play music playlists. Now that Google play is going away, I moved my library over to YouTube music. But now, songs will start playing, then at some point they stop and it skips to the next song. Thats when I get the "not encoded correctly" error message. It has happened on every single song I've tried. It also happens if you try to scroll to a certain point in the song. This problem started immediately when I switched to YouTube music.
This is happening for me too. I'm guessing the problem is a function of the size of the upload library since mine stops at "B" in the artist list. I submitted a support request to YTM. I guess we just have to wait for the Google and Sonos engineers to figure out the APIs.
So now it says I must be a YouTube Music premium subscriber? All I want to do is play my own music that I used to play on a Google Play Music. Is Sonos telling me that now I have to subscribe to YouTube Music in order to play my personally owned music that used to be free on Google Play Music? This is getting really frustrating.
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