Cataloguing Songs at the Marx Memorial Library
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CITY, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON Cataloguing Songs at the Marx Memorial Library Creating an identity for items of musical works within a non- music special collection Sarah E. Crompton October 2019 Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MSc in Library and Information Science Supervisor: Dr. Lyn Robinson 1 Abstract What do you do if a song appears in a box of library donations for a non-music library? Send it somewhere else? Songs have text but not like a book has text: to make songs compute with the system, might they need some kind of special ‘music’ treatment? Is there a musician on the team? This dissertation explores reasons why non-music libraries are the best place for some music items, but also why they might sink without trace by being ‘other’ to the main collection. It looks at how defining an ‘identity’ for a minority music collection and relating it to its wider collection could benefit a special collection otherwise known for its non-music subject areas. The methodology parallels an ‘evidence based library and information practice’ (EBLIP) ‘practitioner-research’ perspective to resolve questions. The research progresses through stages of ‘discussion, assessment, reflection, decision, action, revision’ towards eventual findings and practical outcomes. Focusing on songs, ‘people’s songs’ are defined, highlighting their many differences to the formally constructed forms of classical ‘art’ songs. The findings examine ‘people’s songs’ from the perspectives of documentation, information search and retrieval, and concepts of identity. Concepts of ‘borrowing’, ‘branding’, ‘currency’, ‘fix-ity’, ‘oral documents’ and ‘use-intentionality’ scrutinise the question of identity of this particular set of ‘people’s songs’ to its eventual conclusion. The work discusses how cataloguing systems and standards treat all types of music as one, using systems derived from the approach to classical ‘art’ music; explaining how the fluid creations that are ‘people’s songs’ defy cataloguing rules. The work suggests that as society increasingly values folk-art and other non-academy arts, library standards are showing signs of updating terminology. Looking to the future, with the development of RDA and cloud-based library management systems, could removing cataloguing rules be the answer to cataloguing music, by allowing cataloguers flexibility of judgement to select metadata elements bespoke to the ‘house’ style and resources of special collections? 2 Contents p. 6 Introduction Background to the study • On human response to music • The Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School p. 9 Purpose of undertaking the study p. 10 Scope and Aims p. 12 Research Context: Literature review a. The research related to previous work b. Existing literature: knowledge organisation and the serving of musical needs c. Literature and discussion support for ongoing tasks p. 17 Methodology: A description and justification of the research methods used 1. Outline of methods 2. Detailed account of methodology and tasks a. Evidence gathering i) Initial communications (Fact-finding and set-up meetings) ii) Examination of documents (Catalogued and uncatalogued songs) b. Communications (Interviews, meetings, visits) c. Information gathering - Literature review i) Literature to support directional thinking ii) Literature to corroborate findings d. Completion of the cataloguing task p. 22 Challenges p. 27 Findings 1. Documentation a. Discovery of the different document types b. Document theory i) Concept of Use (Intentionality) ii) Concept of ‘oral documents’ • ‘Fix-ety’ of oral documents -different versions 3 • Contemporary parallels c. Documents - currency d. Document ‘value’ – literature, music, music literature i) Dumbing down or patronising? e. Documents and Publishing i) The publication of song documents for social and political communities: self-publishing and home producing ii) Aspects of sharing, ownership and issue of copyright f. Understanding ‘ephemera’ in terms of MML song collection documents g. Summarising the documentation aspects p. 40 2. Information Search and Retrieval: discoverability and findability i. General cataloguing and classification processes ii. Working in the music domain iii. Indexing iv. Metadata for findability of songs and usability for cataloguers v. Getting to know user types and predicting their ‘finding’ metadata vi. The five elements of people’s songs vii. The subject-topic debate viii. Access points ix. Search by publisher x. Roles and roll call xi. Seeking a flexible approach, adapting elements from a standard p. 51 3. Identity a. What is meant by ‘identity’ i. The Marx Memorial Library (MML) collections– in song ii. Findings relating to ‘identity’: documents and users iii. The ‘Song; Users; Use-intentionality’ cycle iv. Song as indication of personal identity v. The significance of a single item vi. Human energy and behaviour vii. Music branding – what makes song such a useful tool 4 viii. Songs as historical objects ix. Song uses related to the MML collection xi. The importance of topics b. Uses and users: Identity through participation p. 59 Conclusion p. 62 Bibliography p.64 Acknowledgements p. 65 Appendices p. 137 Reflection p. 138 Research Proposal p. 146 Ethical Considerations 5 Introduction "No revolutionary movement is complete without its poetical expression. If such a movement has caught hold of the imagination of the masses, they will seek a vent in song for the aspirations, the fears and hopes, the loves and hatreds engendered by the struggle. Until the movement is marked by the joyous, defiant singing of revolutionary songs, it lacks one of the distinctive marks of popular revolutionary movement: it is a dogma of a few, and not the faith of the multitude." James Connolly (Red Notes, ‘A songbook’, 1977) Background to the study The cataloguing of songs is a complex area, approaching knowledge organisation (KO) from the perspective of music domain needs. Music KO specialists describe music cataloguing as a “weird world” familiar to musicians but an “alien land” for non-musicians, dipping into multiple languages, different sets of notation and requisite wormholes of detective work, where seemingly there is no single definition of a type of ‘work’ in the bibliographic sense. (Jones, M.,2017). A tension for superiority and control exists between the bibliographic and music metadata elements, and the need for consistent and explicit music metadata within the dimensions of library standards designed for cataloguing books. Songs as an art form combine text with a notation system representing sounds, and textual content that can be transmitted by aural, oral and written means and traditions. This essay will reference two distinct types of songs: • ‘People’s songs’ is a collective term for all songs that are created and performed by individual and collaborative endeavour, for and within social settings, including educational, religious, political and work communities and settings. • classical ‘art’ songs that are intentionally composed as works of art and represent bodies of work by composers who contributed to the development of musical compositional style and technique that constitute (western) classical music history. 6 The words ‘traditional’ and ‘folk’, often used interconnectedly when talking about “people’s music” are concepts frequently dismissed as an inaccurate outlook created by folk music collectors of the early 20th Century and the semi-commercial boom of ‘folk’ and ‘traditional’ types of music during the folk revivals of the 1920s, and the 1950s-70s. “It is arbitrary to state now that a song is or is not a folksong” asserted Fred Woods, expressing the view that music has evolved continuously from ancient times and it is wrong to punctuate that history by demarking styles of music to particular eras of the past. (Woods, F., 1979, p.123). It is also a contention that by implication, “people’s music” has lower artistic value and its practitioners lesser skills than their trained counterparts in the classical ‘art’ music world, or that ‘people’s music’ is not of the people if created and performed for commercial gain. Simply put by Marx Memorial Library volunteer and erstwhile member of 'The Partisans' Political Song group, Len Weiss, interviewed for this research: “Music is music”. (Appendix A) Exploration of KO related to ‘people’s songs’ finds firstly that there is far less consideration of the subject than for art songs and secondly that a world of idiosyncrasy awaits within the metadata of this deconstructed and informal artform. ‘People’s songs’ frequently appear as varied song compilations where itemising and indexing complexities challenge the search-and- find of individual items for librarians and users. Whereas outwardly a song document classifies as a piece of music, the music element of this type of song is frequently more generic than a classical song and often simply a vehicle for the text. 1800s ballad tradition is known for producing words with the assumption that the singer will attach an appropriate tune, or for attaching several sets of words to a small number of tunes. It is the focus of this research to argue that if the textual content of song documents and their provenance override the importance of the music, the songs may best add value to a collection by collocation with their text subject area rather than with other music items. This strategy involves risk: if the preferred home for such songs is a subject-related collection rather than a library of music, then the song collection, as a minority collection where there might be no music specialists on hand to understand the ‘tendencies’ that characterise musical works as a unique form of library record, is vulnerable to lack of attention and resources. 7 This essay approaches the question of the identity of music items that exist within a library collection where music is not the main subject area. It uses as a case-study 224 previously uncatalogued song documents at the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School, Clerkenwell Green, London. On human response to music At the time of writing, music and the effects that music can have on people is much under discussion.