My next research project requires ethical approval – interviewing real live people rather than writing about people long since departed. And it’s imperative that I get my submission in on time, since the next meeting of our ethics committee is early next year.
I’ve been working on it for weeks. (Admittedly, I’m a part-time research fellow, so I technically have only 10.5 hours a week to get my research activities done. Yes, we all know that the reality is different!) Anyway, yesterday was my own deadline: it just happened to be the last day we’re open before Christmas, and the morning after my last working day this year.
Efficiency (and Thoroughness)
There’s only one way to fill in a form efficiently, and that’s to make sure every question is answered satisfactorily. To this end, I go through and make myself a list of the information I must provide. Over the past few weeks, I assembled the info. Attachments were created and labelled. And here’s where Tuesday (not a ‘work’ day) and Thursday came unstuck. I wanted to have a particular collection of old newspaper excerpts to share as an interview prompt. Finding and listing them was easy enough. Formatting the document in Word, though? With clips of the excerpts? It took hours!
Have I Forgotten Anything?
Finally satisfied, I turned back to the form. And there – I swear they weren’t there when I initially saved it! – were a couple more questions with grey-shaded boxes requiring answers. And attachments. What a good thing I double-checked. ✔️
It’s done. Phew! Details of whom I hope to interview, what I’ll be asking, and how I’ll save and use the gathered information, are all itemised.
And … breathe!
I submitted it. Ensured everyone involved could access it. At last, I can stop thinking about it until after Christmas!
Now, where’s the domestic to-do list (all the stuff I need to do, because no-one else will think about it) …?
‘All good things must come to an end’, as the saying goes. And an IASH Postdoctoral Research Fellowship is a thoroughly good thing. I handed back my keys with sadness today, but I have had a great year. (The Fellowship was technically six months, but I was graciously permitted to hang around, retaining the use of my office for the rest of the year, which was wonderful, and enabled me to continue data-gathering in the Library’s Heritage Collections.)
19th meets 20th century Looking back …Last glance from bus stop St Patrick’s Square
If you are looking for a next step after your PhD, or if like me, you’re making a change of direction – or need a spell concentrating on a particular research question in the Humanities – do consider applying.
I devoted my time to examining the archives of the Edinburgh publishers, Thomas Nelson. I initially entitled my project, ‘From National Songs to Nursery Rhymes, and Discussion Books to Dance Bands: investigating Thomas Nelson’s Musical Middle Ground’, but the nursery rhymes turned out to be poems, and weren’t what I had in mind! The rest? Yes, I researched them.
I found quite a bit of correspondence between Thomas Nelson’s editors, authors and compilers, which was gratifying. I was able to trace material in journals that I would not have had access to, had I not been in Edinburgh; there’s the excellent University Library collection of actual and digital resources, and the National Library of Scotland just down the road.
I have deferred commencing any significant written work until I had explored all the potentially relevant materials in the files. I believe I’ve now reached that point. As a result of conducting this research, I have ideas for extending my research in new directions, and I’m contemplating writing another book, so I need not only to explore potential audiences, but also to start working on a book proposal
However, I have also applied for and recently won an Athenaeum Award from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland to enable me to conduct an oral history project. This work, to be conducted in 2026, will hopefully enable me to write a final chapter for my proposed monograph. (I’ll be blogging about this before too long, but there are things I need to do first, before I spill the beans!)
I have benefited from being part of a research community, hearing other scholars’ papers and discussing our research; and attending researcher development sessions. I was able to focus on my new direction as a researcher – important, after so many years as an ‘alt-ac’ researcher working in professional services. In this regard, I have also been in a position to submit some other unrelated work for publication, and I spoke at a conference at the University of Sussex in June, all of which gives me a sense that my research is gathering momentum.
Today, my last day, I took a cake to the University Library’s Heritage Collections; went to IASH’s Christmas lunch; and mulled over aspects of my ethical approval submission for my next project. (Oh, and drank quite a bit of coffee!)
Thank you so very much for a great year, IASH!
IASH (Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities)
Music graduates and linguists across the UK (and beyond) will have been aghast to learn that the University of Nottingham is suspending its Music and Modern Languages degree courses. Allowing present students to complete their courses, that is, but not taking any new entrants.
Now, I’m not a Nottingham graduate – I’ve no connection with the University at all (apart from having declined a graduate library traineeship back in 1982, for reasons entirely unconnected with Nottingham University Library). Nonetheless, I know, after my own academic music-related career, that the department has an excellent name. I also know – since I have a BA (Hons), MA and PhD in Music – the value of a music degree.
The decision to suspend teaching music seems to me to be a very retrograde step. It is true that students can still be offered the chance to sing in choirs, play in orchestras and so on, but recreational music, at however high a level, is hardly the same as academic study. To suggest that ‘they can still make music’, puts me in mind of 1920s and 1930s pedagogy, where music was often considered a ‘practical’ subject like sewing, art or woodwork, rather than an academic discipline. Don’t get me wrong – I am certainly not denigrating these subjects. Indeed, if I’m not studying or making music, I can usually be found with a needle and thread. I ama creative individual. However, I wish to make the point that even ‘practical’ creative subjects can be studied in a scholarly sense.
So, since I’m now semi-retired, what can I do to help? Arguably, not a lot, but I can use my voice to make a bit more noise. Let me outline what I studied in my own music degrees, decades ago; and then I’ll share how the knowledge I gained has been put to use in my subsequent career. Nottingham’s Music Department homepage offers expertise across: musicology, performance, composition, technology, global music and society and community – a similar, but updated list of what I studied in Durham, Exeter and Glasgow.
My Own Undergraduate Music Experience
Score-reading
Harmony & counterpoint
Aural training
Music history (musicology)
Music analysis
Ethnomusicology (not global; I studied Javanese Gamelan music)
Electronic Music
Composition
Writing about music
Acoustics
My own Masters and PhD Music Journey
Music history (musicology)
Analysis
Cultural and social history
Writing about music
I studied librarianship after my first, unfinished PhD, spending my career as a music librarian, but I returned to research mid-career and thereafter combined librarianship and research. I didn’t become a teacher, which was one of the traditional destinations for music graduates; neither could I find a way into arts administration. So, music librarianship seemed a sensible choice. I worked briefly in the public library sector, and then in academic librarianship. But ask around, and you’ll find music graduates in all sorts of careers.
What did I gain from my music degrees? Well, as a music librarian with appropriate academic music qualifications, I was very much a subject specialist, and was appreciated as such. Simply being in a choir or student orchestra, without the academic study, wouldn’t have made me as knowledgeable.
The Value of Knowing Your Subject: the Evidence
Many thanks for all your efforts in finding all this music!
I showed the class the print-out from this CD record sleeve, which was very relevant
Thanks very much for your enlightening and entertaining contribution yesterday.
A very thorough and impressive piece of research
Thanks! HOW do you do it? I can hardly contain my exuberance. When I’m running the planet, you’ll get the money your worth and 3 extra vacation days. Promise!
Just wanted to thank you so v much for all your help yesterday. It was a great help to come in and find all the music ready
Thanks for your efforts – they are very much appreciated.
[they said] the Library was a great resource: [they had] come in to find four fairly obscure things and we had (and helped find!) all four.
Will mention your wonderful help in the programme notes! 🙂
This very useful, thank you!
And as an organist and choir director? I use my skills on a weekly basis: arranging music; transposing it; writing it; choral training; and planning/developing repertoire.
Lastly, as a music postdoctoral fellow? Enough said. I wouldn’t be researching at a postdoctoral level if I hadn’t studied it at university first. My research has often focused on the region where I live, but also on music in education and society.
It seems to me a crying shame to cut music degrees, denying students future opportunities, and (presumably) cutting staff with immeasurable expertise in their subject. The city of Nottingham, too, will lose out from the expertise that is lost to the region.
Modern languages are every bit as important. How can you have a university that doesn’t teach modern languages? You want translators? Teachers? People who can conduct business, or write books, or manuals, in a language other than English? Or careers where language graduates bring their own aptitudes? (A friend of mine went into computing, because their linguistic skills apparently made them eminently suitable for that path.) So you need modern language graduates!
My late music-teaching, comprehensive school head of modern languages father will be turning in his grave!
I wrote these words as a reflection, but then I wondered if other people might find them helpful. Maybe something like this – or worse (because I realise my experience was slight compared to someone whose whole article, story or book has been plagiarised) has happened to you? There might be folk who would shudder at the thought of laying bare their emotions, their gut reaction, to such a situation. As for me? My ‘words’ are my strength. If my words in the present posting make me look weak as an individual, be assured that I am fully aware of this. They also make me uniquely ‘me’, and who ever gets far by pretending to be other than themselves?
Meanwhile, my situation has been resolved, thankfully. I feel grateful. Grateful for the help. Grateful for the response and correction of the situation.
However, I feel utterly drained. I’m taking a day’s annual leave because it’s preferable to taking a day’s sick-leave for stress.
I initially headed this posting, ‘Thoughts on detecting plagiarism’. However, ‘on detecting plagiarism’ turns out already to be in the title of someone else’s blog post – Addressing the Inherent Biases in Automated Systems: On Detecting ‘Plagiarism’ (Lancaster University, Ref 2014 Impact Case Studies). I changed my heading. Do read the Lancaster post, if you’re interested. I commend it, even though it’s actually about detecting plagiarism in student submissions, rather than realising your words have been quoted without attribution. I read their blog post briefly last night, and I am not reading it again today. I took no notes, and I have no intention of borrowing anything that was there.
They were literally just a few words, but my own words, and the crux of a 21-page article written 12 years ago. The first full article on the topic. It hurt. And then I started questioning myself:- was I considered so unimportant that my authorship is insignificant? Because, PhD or not, I was ‘merely’ a librarian, hence unimportant? Because I’m now ‘just’ a postdoc research fellow? (That was actually a promotion, by the way!) Because I’m not very famous? Was it because I’m a woman? Because I’m older, and thus considered past it? Because, once published, the words were considered free for the taking? Because, significant or not, they were just a few words, and so temptingly apposite? Low-hanging fruit.
Mulling it over as I got ready for the day, I glanced in the mirror. There I was, an older woman – not ageing particularly stunningly or gracefully, short in stature and wide in figure. My garb was workaday (I was about to sit down to a solitary morning of research, 67 or not). I wore no makeup, and I haven’t been on the latest diet long enough – you wouldn’t notice me if I walked down the street. So there I was. I’m not publicly visible as a performer or composer, unlike a large number of my colleagues. And, as I mentioned, although as a librarian I achieved some visibility in the sectors I worked in – perhaps more visibility than many – librarians aren’t generally known for this quality. We exist to help other people. I’ve not been a librarian for a year now, but I think I probably still carry the aura of invisibility. And when you say ‘librarian’, not many people immediately think, ‘Ah! A researcher. An author. A public speaker.’ Well, there it is!
But although librarians might exist to help, to share, to facilitate, they aren’t ghostwriters. Even when they’ve retired from librarianship and are now employed solely as a postdoctoral research fellow.
‘It Says More about Them than it does about You’
And then I reminded myself (I think this is called cognitive reframing) that I didn’t actually know what they were thinking when they used my unattributed words. I can’t read other people’s minds. My identity may not have even been a consideration. And I recalled my latest mantra: that other people’s words and actions speak more about them than about me.
Trigger warning here. I am not preaching when I say that I’m a practising Christian; I’m declaring a fact, which probably does affect my philosophy. (I’m no Evangelical, though – I’m boringly conventional!) I found an intriguing article, ‘3 Reasons Pastors and ‘Authors’ Should Never Plagiarize‘ by David Kakish (12 July 2019). He does make the salient, human point that ‘Plagiarism Fails to Give Honor Where Honor is Due’. Be assured that I’ll be reading it, out of curiosity, but it doesn’t really help the person who has been plagiarised, so I’ll leave it until later! I did do a little web-searching to see if there was a Christian take on low self-esteem. However, I found nothing that resonated, except the grounding reminder that everyone is a unique person for a purpose, so we should embrace what we are rather than wish we were someone else.
I tried not to beat myself up about my own insecurities. I know what I’ve achieved, from a mid-career standing start, against the odds. My words are old enough to be irrefutably mine, regardless. And … well, I can always write some more!
Here are some useful links which I found last night
If your experience is on the more serious end of the scale, these might be helpful. I’m not proposing to offer guidance on dealing with such situations – I’m really not qualified to – but I would urge you to seek support.
Bailey, writing about author O’Hanlon’s dreadful experience, headed his post, ‘The Emotional Toll of Plagiarism’, and my own limited experience endorses that. In my case, a migraine and shall we say, gut reactions, were clearly telling me I was stressed. Symptoms can be treated, but how much nicer not to have had them at all!
Who said weekends were restful?! Apart from the usual domesticity, and the organ-playing, I put in some more work on this blog.
Finished radically updating my Bio page to better reflect my two career strands.
Balanced my historical copyright page (Claimed from Stationers’ Hall) with a new one: Copyright Today. My career trajectory means I take a keen interest in copyright, intellectual property, plagiarism and so on. I might as well keep useful material handy, for myself or anyone else stumbling across this blog.
You know how you buy a new car, and suddenly everyone seems to be driving the same white Fiat 500? It’s the same with research topics.
“Enthusiastic collectors of Gaelic songs and Irish harp tunes”
I researched Gaelic song-collectors Anna and Margaret Maclean-Clephane as part of my PhD (2009).
I blogged about the sisters as far back as 2012 in my librarian days, when the Whittaker Library was using Blogspot:- How Far Can a Song Travel? (Author Karen McAulay, Whittaker Live blog, Wednesday, 23 May 2012);
I followed up with an extended article about them (also in 2013). See this excerpt from the article:-
Naturally, the Maclean Clephane sisters are in my Pure institutional repository at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. I coined the above phrase, ‘enthusiastic collectors of Gaelic songs and Irish harp tunes’, using it both in my book (p.92) and my article (p.62), both in 2013.
‘While they were still in their teens’
The sisters had a book ‘printed but not published’ while they were still in their teens – you can read about it in my article, p.58. I have to say, the arrangements in their book were – well, okay, but not artistically stylish!
Margaret had a harp – there is actually a Raeburn portrait of Margaret with her harp – see below. Alexander Campbell did say the sisters played, but there’s no portrait of Anna with a harp, so we can’t prove it either way. He didn’t meet them. (There was in fact a third sister, though her musical interest didn’t seem to carry through to adulthood. ) Indeed, Anna wasn’t that hot on the piano, as I recall. They grew up on the Isle of Mull. I’ve driven past the house, Torloisk. It’s massive!
I just love researching and writing about people, particularly musicians! If they’re women musicians, then that’s all the more interesting – so it’s hardly surprising I was drawn to them, and went looking at materials in the National Library of Scotland and the School of Scottish Studies in Edinburgh, and even visiting a manuscript that’s now down in London. (Blog post Women’s History Month 2024. Musicians, this present blog.)
Details of my article
But ever since, these fascinating and talented ladies keep cropping up in my social media feeds. People who’ve read my writings also contact me from time to time. Thanks to the miracles of modern technology, I get notifications that people have consulted my stuff, too … and there’s also a CD whose notes cite me, too:-
The harpist, Masako, asked if she could cite my work – I was very appreciative that she went to the trouble of asking me.
Correctly cited 😀Margaret Clephane … and Masako Art
I spent so long with my early nineteenth-century heroines, but eventually my research took different directions. Not being a Gaelic scholar was just one of the problems I’d encountered! I attended classes in speaking it, at the Conservatoire. I signed up to local authority evening classes at the Gaelic School in Glasgow. But somehow, I never really had time to give it enough attention, despite having been considered good at languages at school and possessing school certificates in – well, several European languages. I understand when someone agrees with me in Gaelic, and can pronounce ‘Torloisk’, for sure, but Gaelic remains beyond me!
But look – now the music is going to be played. That’s exciting!
Right, my two proofs (an article and a contributed chapter), and the final version of another article, have all been returned to their editors. It has actually been quite interesting revisiting recent and not so recent research, after some time away from it. Such revisitations help consolidate things in one’s mind, and keep the topics alive and vivid.
The Big Idea
Tomorrow, by contrast, is a day for looking ahead: I need to start a book proposal and apply for some funding. Storm Amy will determine which desk, on which side of the country, I might be using. Waterproofs at the ready, but I don’t think I’ll take an umbrella! Scottish wind can invert the hardiest of specimens.
(Do I live in the 1950s these days?!) I’ve been tracing a woman who briefly worked for publisher Thomas Nelson in Edinburgh in the mid-1950s. Yesterday, I found a memo from her to one of the managing directors. Instructed to throw a book away if she couldn’t find a use for it, she promptly did find a use for it, giving it to the library of the Glasgow training college where she had previously worked.
I admired her honesty in telling him, because there was probably no need to report back on what happened to a book that was clearly regarded as inconsequential. It came from the Toronto branch of Nelson’s, and was about important Canadian educationalists; I can see why it might not have been much use in the Edinburgh office. (She had, in fact, travelled back from Montreal at the age of 16 – I have no idea how long she’d been there – so maybe he knew this, and thought she’d be interested in this combination of a country she’d visited, as well as a topic she knew well.)
Nonetheless, she did tell him, and reported that not only did the college librarian thank her, but her former boss at the college had commented that it was a title she’d actually been looking for. My interest was piqued, and I checked Jisc Library Hub Discover. Sure enough, the college has since been absorbed into a university, but the university library still has that book – the only copy in the UK. It has survived 72 years and at least one library relocation. I wondered if it had subsequently been borrowed by that senior training college lecturer – the one who had been looking for it?
Apparently not! The book has no trace of ever having been borrowed. Let’s hope she at least sat and read it in the library!
Today, after submitting an article to a journal, I suddenly realised that I hadn’t added to my ‘activity log’ for a while. It has been a sombre summer; I went down south twice; did nothing scholarly at all for some five weeks of the summer; and promptly went down with some virus or other when I got back to Glasgow for the second time – so it’s hardly surprising if I took my eye off the ball. Nonetheless, I decided there was no harm in looking out the activity log and updating it. I got quite a surprise. The two rejections earlier this year, coming close after one another, had hurt. I feel a bit sore about the piece I had genuinely thought was accepted one or two years ago, but more recently turned out to be very much not so; and even more sore about the piece that was requested and then kindly but firmly declined. I felt misunderstood!
But it appears that this scholarly year hasn’t been as bad as I thought, notwithstanding those two knocks. I’ve had an article published; and I’ve given a conference paper and two talks. To any ambitious American academic, this probably seems like pathetically small beer, but I’m a British musicologist, I’m 67, and I’m not trying to secure tenure in terms of a full-time academic contract, so it’s all okay. (I could get a dozen articles published in a year, and it would make no difference to my age or status.)
I have a book chapter and a couple more articles accepted and pending publication. Another article accepted subject to revisions, which I’ve submitted – fingers crossed this time! And today’s article just submitted. That doesn’t seem too bad to me. I now have a couple of half-promised articles which I really ought to get on with; another idea for a collaborative article; and the conundrum of a possible third book. (I’m nowhere near writing this illusive thing, but I do have angles to explore, before I can formulate a precise way forward.)
But what I do know, is that the more irons I have in the fire (yes, more cliches – sorry!), the less I mind about the rejections. Maybe I just directed them to a subject area more dissimilar to my own than I realised, so didn’t hit the targets that were expected? In any case, having other things submitted and under consideration at least offers the hope that next time I might be successful.
More irons in the fire …
I wonder what my activity log will look like by the end of the year?!
I wrote an article. Revised it. Revised the revisions. I have no problem with this – it’s all intended to make it a better article, and hopefully it is now better. However, I feel less positive about the mechanics of submitting it! You have to use a platform called Manuscript Central. Manuscript Central is a product of the ScholarOne platform. (It was owned by Thomson Reuters, then Clarivate and is now owned by Silverchair. Still with me?) I Googled it, and one journal publisher described it as user-friendly.
I’ve used it before. Indeed, I’ve uploaded revisions before. But today, I couldn’t work out how to do all my re-revisions within the platform. After much huffing and puffing, I did submit a manuscript. I’m less confident as to whether I submitted it correctly! And I dislike feeling thwarted by technology. It doesn’t encourage me!
Confused – but no hair was torn out!
On the positive side – I normally have the greatest difficulty stopping research activity when I stop being a part-time researcher for the day, but today I was more than happy to close the document. Gently, if metaphorically shutting the door behind me!
On Thursday, I’ll turn to the next article for submission. Hmm, which platform for this one …?
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 