Blog topic: Music

Kevin Kishimoto, Music Metadata Librarian, Stanford University Libraries, and Tracey Snyder, Music Catalog and Instruction Librarian, Cornell University Libraries, were presented with the Richard S. Hill Award for the best article on music librarianship or article of a music-bibliographic nature, at the 2018 annual meeting of the Music Library Association in Portland, Oregon.  Their article, “Popular Music in FRBR and RDA: Toward User-Friendly and Cataloger-Friendly Identification of Works,” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly  54, no. 1 (2016): 60-86 is available online to the Stanford community.

The Jenny Lind paper doll set is a somewhat unusual and most charming recent acquisition by the Stanford Libraries. The doll, measuring just 10 cm in height, comes with costumes from eight of Lind’s notable opera roles, a “concert-toilette” (recital) gown, and five hair pieces.  The chromolithographed opera costumes may reference actual outfits worn by Lind, or, more likely, originate from the designer’s imagination. We do know that the designer took liberties with the doll’s hair color—Lind was decidedly a brunette.

It was my distinct pleasure to offer a window into Stanford Libraries’ rare music collections to students in the “Why Music Matters” course from the Stanford Pre-Collegiate Summer Institute, and performers in the St. Lawrence String Quartet’s Chamber Music Course.  We gathered in Special Collections for an up-close examination of manuscripts and early print materials, dating from 1942 (Irving Berlin’s White Christmas) all the way back to the 12^th century (a sacred chant fragment).