Here’s another quick update, for the benefit of those who don’t follow the Facebook pages for The Claimed From Stationers Hall or Glasgow Music Publishers projects!
Next week, I’m giving a paper (well, I’ve already video-recorded it, but it’s being given next week) at a conference of cataloguing and metadata librarians. What else would I talk about but legal deposit music in libraries?! So this time, it’s called ‘The Cinderella of Stationers’ Hall: Music (and Metadata) in Georgian Legal Deposit Libraries’.
In a spirit of sheer whimsy, I’ve incorporated a picture of Cinderella as very pale background for the title page of my powerpoint – a volvelle picture from my favourite childhood book. This was a French picture-book of Cinderella, given to me by my late father when he taught on a teaching exchange in France. He died before I got my PhD, and wouldn’t half have been surprised to find his gift to seven-year old me, used as illustration for a perfectly serious presentation about a postdoc research project! You see it here in its technicolour glory. The conference will see it faded to near obscurity, but I know it’s there. A tribute to Pa!
A CAUTIONARY TALE: DO NOT LET IMAGINARY READERS LOOSE IN YOUR LIBRARY!
The first of my research papers to be video-recorded last weekend was a paper about some very old tunes, which appeared in one version in Scottish sources, and in a different but apparently related version in Borders ones. This is for the English Folk Dance and Song Society conference in a few weeks’ time. Well, with all these old sources on my mind, I inadvertently made things more difficult for myself at work today. We were ‘practising’ a new lIbrary lending procedure for when the students return, and it involved setting up fake readers and fake book requests, to make sure the routine worked in practice. I used fake names associated with my research paper, because I was sure they were unlikely to crop up as real people on our system. And then I started getting my imaginary readers to request genuine books as part of this practice session. I shouldn’t have done it – those imaginary readers had very specific requirements, ALL concerning some aspect of the Scottish Borders, Northumbria and Cumbria.
They had me running all round the library tracking down books from every corner, high and low. If I had had any sense, I’d have picked books from one single shelf! My Fitbit tells me I have walked further than I’ve done in months, today, and to judge by the calories expended, I’ve carried more weights ditto. That will teach me to use my imagination ….
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 