BROADCASTING AND ORCHESTRA LIBRARIES BRANCH

  Report on the sessions during the 2002 conference (August 4-9) of IAML in Berkeley, USA.

Broadcasting and Orchestra Libraries Branch brought two sessions in Berkeley.

On Tuesday, August 6, there were first the branch elections. The result of the elections: Chair, Dr. Jutta Lambrecht, Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Köln/Cologne; Vive-chair, Peter Linnitt, BBC Music Library; Secretary, Henry Larsson, Swedish Radio Music Resources.

At the congress in Perigueux 2001 the branch decided to go further with issues devoted to digitally stored information, especially questions on exchange of data. The branch board created a questionnaire, which was distributed to 14 institutions worldwide. We got 11 answers. Discussion and conclusions on this topic were on Tuesday-sessions’s agenda in Berkeley. Two essential questions were:

• Would you like to have access to other libraries’ catalogues?
• Is there willingnes in your company or in your library to let other libraries have access to your catalogues? If not, what kind of obstacles are there?

All 11 answered positively to this questions. There are some technical and safety problems to be solved. We decided, however, to study carefully the possibilities to go further. In The Netherlands, Finland and Sweden, there are already intranet versions, which in near future might be available at least for the European Broadcasting Union’s (EBU) members. The discussion will be continued next year in Tallinn.

The second session on Thursday, October 8, was devoted to American orchestra library systems. Before the session, we had an opportunity to spend a couple of hours in San Francisco Symphony Orchestra’s music library, where John Campbell was our host. The mutual professional disussions formed a good basis for the afternoon presentations on Major Orchestra Librarians’ Association (MOLA) and The Orchestra Planning and Administration System (OPAS). Karen Schnackenberg (Dallas Symphony Orchestra) and Tom Gaitens (Fine Arts Management, New York) showed by examples how the current version of OPAS works in English and in German. OPAS is a good tool both for orchestra management and for orchestra librarians. It is used by 29 American and 24 European orchestras. OPAS5(DOS version of OPAS) is used by 30, most German-speaking orchestra offices.

A special Theodore Thomas collection of scores and orchestral parts has been put to the data base in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Library and Rosenthal Archives. Brenda Nelson-Strauss offered a distinguished presentation on the inventory and preservation work with this unique material, once collected by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s founder, Theodore Thomas. More information on on this collection is available on Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s web site at www.cso.org

 Chair: Kauko Karjalainen (Helsinki)