The following was written by Don Roberts for the IAML Archive in 2015.
My first IAML conference was St. Gallen in 1971. It was a wonderful, humbling and educational experience to meet so many of the great names in international music librarianship as well as those from sound archives and music information centers since it was a joint meeting with IASA and MIC. From 1971 through 2002 I attended every conference and enjoyed the various splendid settings (Barry Brook stated that IAML actually meant International Association of Magnificent Locations) with their varied musical, library and cultural treasures. My early work in international IAML focused on the training of music librarians and I led the campaign to create the Commission for Education and Training which was established in 1975. I served as Chairperson of the Commission until 1984 when I was appointed Treasure of IAML, a position I held to 1992 when I was elected President.
Thanks to an excellent Board, a superb Fontes editor and a dedicated group of officers, it was pretty much “business as usual” while I was President. However there were two areas of major new activity: Outreach and automation.
The early 1990s were a very interesting time when the world’s political makeup was changing, especially in Eastern Europe. This had major implications for music librarianship and IAML. Suddenly travel restrictions were removed by many countries but colleagues from there did not have funds to attend IAML conferences. In 1973 I had the good fortune to visit many of the major music libraries in Eastern Europe. The librarians there expressed a desire to become more involved in international IAML and I conveyed this interest to the top IAML officers. They were sympathetic but no action was taken. When Neil Ratliff, who had close ties with Greece, was Secretary General in the late 1980s he suggested creating an outreach fund, but a formal international program was not implemented. At the same time the UK branch, especially Roger Taylor, became interested in interacting with Eastern European colleagues. Building on these efforts a special plenary session about a possible IAML outreach program was held in Helsinki (1993). Topics included what IAML could do, what IAML should do, what was needed and what had already been established by national branches. As a result of these discussions an Outreach Fund was established by the Council, which also urged the national branches to implement their own programs including sending music, books and recordings to various under-stocked libraries around the world. Complimentary subscriptions of Fontes were donated to eight emerging nations to promote Outreach. I am very pleased that outreach programs are still in existence.
IAML and its members were primary players in the development of library automation. There was a steady stream of enhancements to bibliographic control, access to collections and user services. Within the organization, IAML-L was launched in 1994 and remains a major communication network for music librarians.
