MLA Conference Diary 1

The annual conference of the Music Library Association (USA) was held 25-28 February 2015 in Denver, Colorado, USA. Lisa Shiota of the Library of Congress reflects on her experience.

A view of the Colorado capitol in snowy Denver

MLA's annual meeting offers a wonderful chance to catch up with colleagues, and to learn about what innovations their libraries are developing. I enjoyed the plenary session on Friday 27 February on current advancements in digital musicology. The session focused on four sites in particular: the free RISM database, the Contemporary Composers Web Archive, the Blue Mountain Project, and the Musical Treasures Consortium. These sites help to further musicological scholarship, and in the case of the last three, serve as digital repositories for historically significant websites and items.

Of course, the big buzz this year was that this plenary session and other sessions were streamed live so that anyone could watch (and through chat, take part) in the conference, anywhere in the world. It was a thrill to know that my colleagues who could not travel were still able to experience the meeting with me. These videos have been recorded and can be found at vimeo.com.

I have completed my first year as Recording Secretary on the MLA Board, and had spent much of my time at Board meetings throughout the week. Although this sometimes meant missing a few presentations, serving on the Board has been a valuable experience in learning how a professional association is run, and it is an honor to take part in guiding where MLA will go in the future.

Overall, I had a great time in Denver, and I look forward to the annual meeting in Cincinnati next year.