The Best Chance of a Successful Research Library Visit?

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

To anyone starting out on their research journey, visiting an unfamiliar library can be intimidating. Here are some tips to help you prepare.

  • Know what you’re looking for. (1) Have you been able to check the catalogue online and get the shelf references?
  • Know what you’re looking for. (2) Have you got all the bibliographical details to hand? You might need them to look something up once you’re on site, in a card, microfiche or some other retro catalogue format. You also might need to ask someone to fetch items for you – reference libraries don’t have all their stock on open access, and special collections/archives never do – so it’s only reasonable to have as much info as possible to share with the staff who’re going to help you.
  • Know what you’re looking for. (3) Be clear in your own mind as to why you’re going to see these resources, what you’re intending to look out for, how much you can reasonably get through, and what it will take for you to feel you’ve had a successful day. This is crucial!
  • Practicalities (1) If you have to order things up in advance, be sure you’ve allowed enough time between your request and your visit.
  • Practicalities (2) Check travel arrangements and book in advance if necessary.
  • Practicalities (3) Have a pencil, rubber and ruler. Pens may not be permitted. Take your laptop cable. Find out about wifi access.
  • Practicalities (4) Ask if you can use your phone to take photos. There could be a form to fill in.
  • Be prepared for different rules and procedures. Answering your phone with a whisper might be okay in your usual library, but an absolute faux-pas somewhere else! Last week, I answered my phone in a public library, and had just started to explain that I couldn’t speak because I was in a lib …. (you’ve guessed the rest. Shhhhh! My own fault for answering it in the first place.)
  • Have an open mind. Be prepared for unexpected finds! If it looks useful, note it. AND note the page you found it on! Don’t scribble something so cryptic that you’ll never remember why you wrote it.
  • Get there early, if possible. Have a leisurely coffee before you start, because there’s always the chance you’ll be so engrossed or busy that you won’t want to waste precious time later on!
  • On your way home, try to go through your notes. Highlight anything you need to follow up.

I had a great trip to Edinburgh yesterday. The sun shone; I made it up the 122 News Steps to the Royal Mile without ending up completely out of breath; and I was so early that I was able to have a very leisurely coffee indeed in the sunshine, before heading to George IV Bridge. I had only ordered four actual items to look at, but I was looking at them quite intensively, so that was exactly right for the time I had available.

‘Lost Works’, meaning No Known Library Holdings at all

I took notes and photos, found a couple of extra unexpected features (evidence of ‘lost works’, no less – that’s a book history term meaning that we know the title did exist, but no copies are extant in libraries today), and on the way home, I was able to email another library with a question about their own edition of a piece of music I’d just been looking at.

Sadly, I can’t assure you that every research visit will be as sunny or as successful as mine was – but at least you’ll have given yourself the best chance!

Completely unrelated to my research – I just liked it!

An Open Door in Berkeley Street (or, Latte after the Library)

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

I went back to the Mitchell Library in my continuing search for old (historically old) lady music publishers. Floor 5 was temporarily operating from Floor 3, but the books I needed could thankfully still be got out for me.

The Mitchell’s epic carpets. Glasgow logo.

The ladies were nowhere to be seen in the book documenting the Glasgow Society of Musicians. Nor was there any hint of them in another book about live music for Victorian Glaswegians.  (Although I did, whilst I was still in the library, get an Ancestry message from one of the ladies’ descendants!)

Floor 4 for the Music 🎶 Catalogue

Undeterred, I headed for Floor 4, to have another look in the old card music catalogue  – a really useful resource.  Again, I only found two of one composer’s pieces.  I  already own one of them,  but that still means one find. And I also spotted a couple of issues of a journal that interested me.  A quick flick through, allowed me to note potentially interesting pages, even if they don’t relate to the present theme. I was in my element.

Closing my laptop, I decided to round off the morning with a coffee downstairs …

Then the fire alarm went off.  Everyone filed out, and I looked down the street. Would I find a café?

Turkish coffee pots
The erstwhile Thistle Records in Sovereign House. Name plaque still there.

Believe it or not, the Turkish cafe in between what had been Thistle Records, and Kerr’s Music Corporation (Glasgow Music Centre), was in another building with a historical past: no less than the Glasgow Society of Musicians, about which I had just been reading. I got my latte, also snapping a picture of the interior – clearly once the Musicians’ Concert Room – and the art-nouveau front door.

Where once they heard piano trios …
You can just see the arched ceiling …
Mission accomplished!

Another time, I’ll make sure I have a coffee ‘to sit in’ rather than takeaway!  Glasgow’s most eminent musicians would have enjoyed performances there … whether or not the ladies ever got a look-in!

The Glasgow Ladies Publishing Sheet Music

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Yesterday, I set out to track down some music.  It’s light music, not great music  – almost ephemeral, you could say – but together,  it tells a story.

I also wanted to find out more about the life of one of these fin-de-siecle Glasgow woman music publishers.

It’s not that easy. The music is scattered round our legal deposit libraries; the cataloguing isn’t completely consistent; and fin-de-siecle ladies, whether single,  married, childless or proud mothers, didn’t  leave much record of their daily lives.  They’re hidden in the shadows of family members, and, whilst I imagine they knew one another, let me stress that this is NOT a tale of a female publishing cooperative!

I had a nice chat with a local history librarian, making an acquaintance who is now equally keen to find out more; then I headed home – as yet, none the wiser – to devise a complex spreadsheet of music titles.  I’m visualising a pinboard with strings criss-crossing between ladies, libraries and  work-lists.

So complex, indeed, that I still haven’t planned how best to get to SEE the music.

A weekend task?

Sadly, a Pixabay find, not one of ‘my’ ladies!

Ladies in Music Publishing – and a Curious Tea Set

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Having virtually finished a major project (the second monograph), I’m exploring future directions.

Unfortunately, this looks – even to me – like going randomly round in somewhat squiggly circles, since it entails seizing intriguing little thoughts that have occurred to me at various points in my research, and (metaphorically) tugging at them to see where they might lead.  Right now, none of them have yielded much more, although it’s fair to say that I need to  wait for some to have an outcome.

Ladies in the Music Publishing Trade

There’s the thought that a publisher’s wife – who HAD been a piano teacher  – might have authored his piano tutor for him. Maybe, but there’s no way to know. Dead end? Well,  yesterday, I traced a copy in Australia.  I’d love to see it, even if it tells me no more.

Then there’s the sister of another publisher.  I do have marginally more to go on – and I’m currently following up some leads – but it’s not exactly a whole new project. After a couple of hours’ searching the British Newspaper Archive delving this evening, I had learnt that she accompanied a church concert in her late 40s – since she, too, was a piano teacher, this is hardly earth-shattering news! 

(Come to think of it, I encountered a third lady piano teacher who was a talented songwriter and small-scale self-publisher… see, if only I could amass enough extra information, I would clearly have the makings of an article here!)

So, I also started another line of enquiry. This could be more fruitful, but it’s too soon to know.

As for the tea set? Nothing to do with the ladies, as it happens. The second lady’s brother (the publisher) was a church session clerk – an important role to this day.  He therefore had the responsibility of making presentations when called upon. And, on the occasion when his sister played the piano, the church was making the presentation of a tea set and a clock to their minister, who was getting married.

In a very Chaste Design

Doulton, on eBay. Not chaste?

This brings me to the most pressing question (I jest):-

Was it plain? White or cream, maybe? It only had a small, modest embellishment.  How else can a tea set be ‘chaste’?

Or this. Surely this! Again,  on eBay.

It’s honestly not a problem that would occur to any Kirk session today! 

Main Image by Mirka Oborníková from Pixabay

Alice [Goes Indexing] in Wonderland

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

It is clear that I haven’t quite mastered the art of part-time working yet. I have collated a list of keywords for the first, general index, and that’s just waiting for when I get to see the proofs. The next step was to get the copy-edited book manuscript back to the copy-editor. I cheerfully threw myself into that task too. Domesticity was forced into spare minutes. I have no idea how long I spent – but I did it. I made all my little tweaks and corrections to the manuscript, and off it went. Now, all that remained was to collate a list of music titles for the second index of historical Scottish publications. Between Friday and today, I did that, too. It’s a long, long list!

Do we have a Crisis? Or don’t we?

There was a problem, though. Whilst we live in Glasgow, most of my relatives are hundreds of miles away, and when a family concern raises its head, I immediately go into ‘prepare for a crisis’ overdrive.

Distractions!

  • My car went to the garage for a once-over, just in case I needed to drop everything. Back home, and back to indexing. It’s strange, trying to concentrate on something super-important, whilst wondering if you’ll still be at home in two hours, two days or two weeks …
  • Thinking of the family in Glasgow, I ordered ready-meals online from a different supermarket to my usual one, simply because they could deliver them quicker. This worked – reasonably well – but with some reservations. (I had to go out this evening, to buy things that I’d missed …)
  • Messages have flown between Glasgow and ‘down south’, in between checking 19th century publication dates and deciding where cross-references might be needed. It’s a bit disorientating!
  • I had a trip to Dundee on Saturday, grateful to be going somewhere else and doing something different for a few hours, and then – yup, back to indexing again. Organist duties on Sunday. More indexing. Dinner prepared and consumed. Still more indexing. And so on!
  • Because of the nature of the potential crisis, it all felt very much like Alice-in-Wonderland, where nothing seemed logical or predictable. Indeed, Alice’s rabbit-hole might have seemed a calm and welcoming place by comparison.

‘Late, Late, for a Very Important Date?’ Not Me!

Image from Pixabay

My main concern was that I had to get the book to a point where I literally could go no further, pending receipt of the proofs for adding page-numbers to the two indices. If the potential crisis proves to be an actual one, that means I can shove the laptop and printouts into a bag and take them with me. My book-writing is an unfathomable mystery to most of my English family, who aren’t up-to-date with what I get up to, and consider me really somewhat eccentric and excessive in what interests me, but even in a crisis, I don’t want to hold up the publishing process!

I think I’m now at the point where I can do no more. I should probably do something completely different, away from the laptop, tomorrow. There will assuredly be family messages which I can pick up on my phone, but I cannot do any more to the book. Maybe I should sew something. Oh, and get the hedges cut, just in case I have to desert them in a hurry …

If I’m still in Glasgow on Wednesday, I can turn my attention to future research-planning. It’ll feel more like a research day if I’ve had a relaxed day before it!

Absorbed in Indexing …

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

I returned my edited, copy-edited manuscript to the publisher today, and turned back to the small matter of my second index. One index wasn’t enough for Yours Truly – I needed to index all the historical publications that I’ve alluded to, which is not at all the same as a list of modern references – it includes lost works amongst those that are still extant. 

I did make the list a couple of months ago, but I realised now that it wasn’t in the most useful order.  Worse still, I had used tabs rather than a properly formated table, making it just a bit more fiddly to manipulate.

Hey-ho, time for a reorganisation exercise. So I got started … I do quite like bibliographical lists, but this one’s quite an undertaking.

I sat at that laptop so long today that my eyes are dry and scratchy (hello, eyedrops) whilst my neck twinges when I move my head.  Owch.  I tried a heated oat-pack, and  eventually opted for Voltarol gel. Here’s hoping!

I haven’t remotely finished the task yet – it’ll have to wait now until I’ve been to Dundee tomorrow.  The trip will probably be a welcome break.

Meddle the Thistle Wha Daur! (Old Poem, New Thistle)

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Thistle against a white wall with graffiti reading ;'Vibe'

Our neighbours have a high white wall. There’s a tall thistle growing there, and some young joker has scrawled above it, ‘VIBE’. I don’t know if they were consciously referencing the metaphor of a prickly thistle to represent Scottish, and most particularly, Glaswegian identity, but – hey, they wrote it directly right above that thistle, so who knows? I took a photo anyway – it was too good an opportunity to miss.

Every time I walk down the road or get into my car, there it is, and every time it reminds me of a poem by one of ‘my’ Scottish song-writers. He published his book of poems in 1894, and it’s well out of copyright, so I can share it with you. Just look at that last verse – there’s a proud, very nationalist Scot for you!

“I’m a Scot and I carena’ wha’ kens it, Juist meddle the thistle wha’ daur,

They’ll maybe get mair than they wantit, An Scotia be little the waur …”

To be honest, I’m more interested in the poet for his work as an Edinburgh music teacher, than as a poet or local historian, but it’s all part and parcel of who he was. Two different musicians set this song to music – one was really pretty uninspiring, but the other one’s not too bad! (Well… musically competent, not remotely ‘Scottish’ sounding, nor particularly memorable, but competent.)

The poet-teacher gets a significant mention in my forthcoming book, especially his views about children singing Scottish songs.

I have just sent the manuscript back to the editor with my own amendments to the copy-editing, so watch this space! Now to turn back to the question of the second index … which I drafted a few weeks ago, but which now needs fine-tuning before I get the proofs back to link my index-terms to the publisher’s page numbers!

Image by Ralph from Pixabay

This was the Countdown to the New Me

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Okay, I promised I would be more forward-looking, now that I’m no longer a librarian. I’m not going back on my word, but I just wanted to share the stitched countdown project that I have completed over the past three years. My purpose was to count down the weeks until I would retire from librarianship. To that end, I sewed one square a week, and joined them up to make three panels for the folding screen that lives beside my desk. Sometimes they’re topical, sometimes reflective, and sometimes (when I got behind with myself), it’s just a number. (Those were at least good practice at sewing satin stitch. I only really took up embroidery during the pandemic lockdown – I’m not an expert.)

3-panel screen displaying the stitched countdown squares. Background: a garden hedge.
Stitched Countdown – a square a week over three years

I finished neatening off the panels today, and took the screen outside to take a photo.

Then I came back indoors and checked my emails. To my delight, I’ve been sent the copy-edited version of my book manuscript. So yes, looking forward, I foresee a busy week checking it all and making any corrections! Semi-retired? I think we’ll forget about that until the manuscript is returned to my editor!

If, like me, you’re an Author, not an Indexer …

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Reviewing an index
What to look for in a good index – from the blog and website of Nicola King, Fellow of the Society of Indexers (FSocInd)

If, like me, you’ve written a book and find yourself having to index it, you may well wonder just where to begin. My second monograph, like the first, is being published by Routledge. They supply you with general instructions. However, having been through my entire text looking for index terms, I found myself fretting that I might have over-indexed it. (Let’s face it, in my whole career as a librarian, cataloguing a book entailed picking a handful of subject-entries to cover the whole book. On the other hand, indexing – a different task entirely – means picking index terms for every topic covered in each page or chapter, never mind the whole book.)

So, I have a great deal of respect for indexers. My biggest concern is that I may have indexed ‘passing mentions’. This is A Bad Thing in indexing terms. Nicola King’s blog post, Reviewing an Index, offers lots of good advice. Nicola explains here, how to recognise and avoid indexing a passing mention.

However she has, additionally, done a separate blog post specifically about passing mentions:- Passing Mentions: when you don’t have to index everything. The crucial advice in Nicola’s posting is as follows:-

“Passing mentions are an item or concept mentioned incidentally in the text but lacking worthwhile information about the item or concept itself. Mere mentions of the existence of something that does not provide at least one fact should be avoided in an index. Generally I try not include locators where no substantial information is provided.

“Passing mentions typically fall into four main types:

  • examples (Many marsupials, including possums and bilbies, are nocturnal – entry would be marsupials or nocturnal animals, not possums or bilbies),
  • lists of things or people (the group subject is the entry if it needs one)
  • asides (as my predecessor, Dr Jones, might have done – no entry for Jones)
  • scene setting may include passing mentions that are not followed up with what follows.

Nicola’s Reviewing an Index blog post also gives further links to useful web-pages from the Society of Indexers (by Lyndsay Marshall and Ruth Martin respectively), telling you what makes an index good, or bad. Again, we find passing mentions on the bad list!

Passing mentions

As the name suggests, a passing mention is a topic or entity that is mentioned by the author in passing. There is little or no substantive information provided in the text, and so it does not merit an entry in the index. Determining what is, and what is not, a passing mention is another core indexing skill.

I also found a pdf of Indexing Best Practices from the Institute of Certified Indexers. A useful hint that jumped out at me was about cross-references. As a librarian, I know all about See references as opposed to See also references, but I didn’t know that double-posting is preferred in certain indexing instances. So, this is very helpful to know, and I’ll have to go back through my embryonic pre-index document to make sure none of my cross-references might have led users ‘to an entry with a single locator’:-

Cross-references do not lead users to an entry with a single locator (in such instances double-posting should be used instead of cross-referencing).

Wish me luck! I can see I haven’t quite finished yet …

Fellow Amongst Kindred Spirits

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Print Networks conference programme cover

Perhaps it’s not surprising to find more librarians and former librarians than usual at a research conference about book and print history and the book trade – but I was certainly in my element amongst the researchers at this week’s Print Networks conference in Newcastle. Indeed, I even found two more musicologists and a music practitioner amongst the kindred spirits, so I didn’t really need to try very hard to make my point that printed music history is indeed a branch of book history. Glasgow printers also got a look-in, so my talk about Glasgow music publishers wasn’t out on a limb geographically, either.

Then there were trade catalogues, book pirates, Stationers’ Hall, slave narratives, radical newspapers in Birmingham … just so many interesting papers!

Having spent the first part of the week in Newcastle, the last couple of days were ‘mine’, an agreeable blend of sociability, along with mundane catching-up at home, and (ahem!) more research.

A Lost Work, aka, a Ghost Publication

An old copy of a classical piece in a Mozart Allan edition raised some interesting questions – could I resist following them up? Indeed I could not. I’ve found another lost work – or as I prefer to call it, a ‘ghost’ publication. It would have been so very nice to have tracked this down. The advertisement absolutely reinforced a point I make in my forthcoming book. But it’s in neither Jisc Library Hub Discover, WorldCat, the British Newspaper Archive, Abe, Alibris, eBay, the Sheet Music Warehouse, Google Books nor Archive.org. There’s no mention of an editor or compiler for this collection, just a title. Oh, bother!

London suburbs

And a London Gent supplying Mozart Allan with Light Music?

It gets worse – another advert at the back of the same classical piano piece appears to suggest that a light-music composer who published almost exclusively with Ascherberg, Hopwood and Crew, also published a few early works with Mozart Allan – but using a different first name. Two of the works published by Mozart Allan also appear later with the first name he was mainly known by. This is interesting. I’ve spent several hours yesterday and today trawling eBay (and treating myself), whilst on the trail of this gent. Yes, I know the book is already in preparation. Anything I find won’t go in the book, but research doesn’t stop when a book is published, does it?!