MAKING MUSIC LIBRARIANSHIP MORE IMPROVISATORY: A MUSICOLOGIST'S PERSPECTIVE 1

When the author was a freshman in college, many moons ago, at Appalachian State University, she was given a task by her bassoon professor. In order to better play the classical era period music the author was working on currently, she was to go listen to various performances, on LP, and transcribe various cadenzas. Our music library was modest but well-built, in the music building, with wonderful small listening rooms, set up to do this very task. At this particular time, the LPs were in the stacks. The author knew what she was looking for generally-Mozart, Kozeluch, etc.-but the encouraged mode of browsing was to pull out everything that looked interesting and plausible. There was listening, transcribing, reading the liner notes to augment her own notes; hours spent in that tiny little room, surrounded by books, scores, and LPs. It was overwhelming but simultaneously liberating; the author loved the possibilities that lay before her. Now perhaps she is preaching to the choir here, but that potential libraries have has always been something with which the author deeply identified. As a kid, her favorite thing to do was to go to the public library, sit in her favorite section (religion and mythology), sit down on the floor, and read every book on the shelf.