other committees that you can join as well.

I look forward to getting together again soon, either in Louisville or here in Seattle. Please feel free to call or drop by SPL.

- John Brower

This is my first year as editor of the newsletter and I will admit my first newsletter ever! But I do look forward to the challenge of putting this together.

Thank you for submitting your contributions in a timely fashion. Reading your contributions, I see that you all lead busy, interesting and varied lives. Thank you all for sharing your thoughts.

I would like to wish Elaine Weeks on behalf of us all a very happy retirement and thank her for the many years she has edited this newsletter and other contributions she has made to the Chapter.

Total Cash Available on October 31, 1997 $1,933.51

The Pacific Northwest Chapter of the Music Library Association held its annual meeting April 30 - May 1, 1999 at the Knight Library at the University of Oregon in Eugene Oregon.

Attendees had the option on the first day of either; attending a workshop put on by the Orbis Library Consortium called Copyright for Educators, or going on a tour of the Special Collections of the Knight Library on the U of O campus. Those of us who attended the workshop found it very enlightening and I have personally drawn on this information when answering questions on copyright at my library. Reports of the tour were complimentary.

In the evening we all joined together at Leslie Bennett's house for a wonderful dinner. It was a good time of getting to know each other and we had great time listening to Harry Miller play his flute. (I also had a chance to make everyone laugh with the recordings that Jo Stafford made under the pseudonym of Jonathan and Darlene Edwards.)

The next day we all joined back together at the U of O where Leslie Bennett welcomed us. Catherine Gerhart gave a very informative presentation on the Digital Library as they are doing it at the University of Washington. It was very exciting to see the possibilities of the future. (I have used the Jacob Lawrence web page many times when looking for his images.) Next we had the delightful opportunity to listen to Tom Manoff. He is the classical record critic for National Public Radio, and a best selling author. His conversation with us was challenging and insightful. We are deeply indebted to both Tom and also to Leslie for bringing him to our meeting.

After this presentation we held the business meeting. (For the details of this see the minutes.)

All in all, it was a great meeting. Thanks again to all who made it possible.

—John Brower

The meeting was called to order at 11:53 a.m. by Cathy Gerhart, Chair. Eleven Chapter members were in attendance.

I.. Minutes of the 1998 Business Meeting were approved as printed in the 1998 Newsletter.

II. The Treasurer's report was accepted as read.

III. Old Business:

1. Chapter Brochure. No progress has been made on the creation of a promotional brochure for the chapter. Better Woerner will work on it during the summer. Cindy Richardson will help with the content. Others who want to work on a project might be able to help. It was suggested that enquiries on MLA-L might produce samples of other brochures. The question was asked as to whether we need approval from MLA for the project.
2. Web Page Feedback. John Gibbs was absent due to illness but had indicated he is willing to do web master maintenance. It was suggested that a paragraph be added to the handbook indicating that the Secretary will update the Webmaster as to any changes in information on the web page. A note of thanks was extended to John for the good appearance of the web page.
3. Directory Update. The directory is now finished. A question was raised as to how we notify people that it is on the web and how paper copies may be ordered. It was decided to draft and send a letter of information to all the listed organizations. This should be done by Sept. 1. Cindy will create the letter and the Secretary will mail. The need for upgrading and revising information in the directory was discussed. Cathy urged various participants representatives to review their current entries for changes. Leslie Bennett suggested that web and e-mail addresses be added as links. Cathy agreed to update entries (by e-mail only). Once a year we will have an archived edition.

IV. New Business:

A. Election results. Kirsten Walsh (University of British Columbia) was elected Vice/Chair/Chair-Elect of the Chapter for the upcoming year. Harry Miller (Sunhawk) was elected Secretary-Treasurer, and our sincere appreciation was extended to Beverly Stafford for also agreeing to run. Terry Horner (University of British Columbia) was appointed to the position of Newsletter Editor.

B. Suggested changes to the Constitution. A draft of suggested changes to the constitution was submitted to the membership. The changes in question concerned Article III. Membership. 2. Classes of Membership, Article III: 4. Privileges: B. Officers and Article IV: 4. Election and tenure: A. In the 1^st and 2^nd instances, it was agreed to substitute the word Individual for Regular, dropping the definition in the 1^st instance. The 3^rd proposed change questioned the stipulation of two candidates per office; it was decided not to change the wording of the Constitution at this time. The first two changes were agreed upon and recommended for inclusion in the annual ballot mailing.

V. Other Business from the floor.

A. Retiring member Elaine Weeks (Seattle Public Library) was honored by the membership with a contribution by the Chapter to MLA’s Kevin Freeman Travel Grant along with cards and gifts which were greeted with paroxysms of delight from the honoree.

B. Leslie proposed consideration of a merger with the Northern California Chapter which is also a very small chapter. The suggestion will be brought up for discussion at the next meeting.

4. The Chapter has some remaining copies of the old directory still on hand. It was agreed that they should be disposed of.

VI. 2000 Chapter Meeting:

Leslie was thanked for hosting an entertaining and informative meeting at Eugene, OR. Laurel Sercombe offered to host the Chapter meeting in Seattle next year. The following year, Paula will host the meeting in Pullman.

VII. The meeting was adjourned at 12:50.

The Annual Meeting of the Pacific Northwest Chapter of the Music Library Association will be held in Seattle. Members will be informed as to the dates and location.

The Nominating Committee requests your suggestions for candidates for the office of Vice Chair/Chair-Elect. Under our timetable, the member elected to the office of Vice Chair/Chair-Elect in the Spring of 2000 will serve a total of three years. Please send or phone your nominations to Cathy Gerhart, Chair, by February 1, 2000.

Please submit your program ideas or suggestions for the upcoming annual meeting to Kirsten Walsh, Program Chair.

Probably the most important thing to cross my screen this year is the Portland Country Dance Community, for which I am now on the board of directors and also acting as the booking agent. The booking job consists of arranging bands and callers for the contradances in Portland. I also worked very hard over the summer putting together a grant proposal for this group, which may help us to continue a series of dances for children. I am planning on attending the English Country Ball, which includes dances from the 18th and 19th century. Some people wear period costumes!

On the Reed front, we have gotten the go-ahead to plan for total conversion of our stack area to compact shelving. I'm deep in the planning process for this now, and hope that this may give us years of expansion room without necessitating the heavy weeding that I was anticipating. We recently got two major gifts, one for purchase of recordings and scores and one for videos, so will need the shelf space created by this project.

Also on the Reed front, my son, bless his heart, has transferred here for his junior year because facilities are so good for biochem. But he hasn't made any friends yet, and is now talking about going back to Vermont to finish. Sigh.

I hope all of you are well, and look forward to seeing you in Louisville.

• Thomas Quigley

My news is that my life-partner and I are leaving Dec. 1 for 4 months in Austria, vacation cum research leave. A major highlight - New Year's Eve on Stefansplatz in Wien (will we be deafened by the bells of Stefansdom?), New Year's Day at the Wiener Philharmoniker Neujahrskonzert (we got our request for tickets picked in this concert's lottery). Another experience on this trip is that I will be lecturing on Brahms and Bibliography at the University of Pavia in Spring 2000.

Though my library career is only in its formative stages (to say the least), here is an update:

In December, Kevin will be graduating with his MLIS from the University of Washington. He eagerly awaits whatever lies ahead. Until that "perfect job" does come along, he will continue as a reference intern at the Seattle Public Library. "One of these days that DMA will come in handy," he says, "I just know it."

• Catherine Gerhart

At work I recently demoted myself to make my Section a Self-managing Team. My new title is Music/Media Cataloging Librarian. Giving up the "Head" title was the hardest part while working as part of a self-managing team is heavenly. I am just finishing up being the cataloger on a LC/Ameritech grant to catalog and scan photographs of Pacific Northwest Native Americans. You may remember that I talked a little about it last spring in Eugene in my presentation on digital projects at the University of Washington. I'm looking forward to working with the new Head of the Music Library, Judy Tsou, who will begin in January.

At home, the boys continue to grow. Julian will pass me up in height any day now. Colin has begun taking piano lessons and he and I have been having a great time playing simple duets (the only kind I can play). My big news is my recent purchase of a new professional model flute. Since joining the Seattle Symphonic Band I've been playing a lot more and my student model, 25 year old flute just wasn't keeping up. I'm actually enjoying dusting off some of the old etude books! We added a kitten to the family. Nothing like a kitten around the house to remind you of how glad you are the kids are growing up! Her name is Gracie and she must be going through the "terrible twos" at the moment since she's decided to spend most of her waking hours testing us to see what she can get away with. Looking forward to seeing everything in Seattle this spring.

• Deborah Jones

Rapid progress is being made on the retrospective conversion of VPL's song index to machine-readable form, via the 505 contents note on bibliographic records. Emphasis for now is on pop, rock and jazz standards from our large reference collection of printed music. Even the daunting 1000+ fakebooks are receiving their full contents notes.

The well-loved and heavily-used card index will remain a fixture of the Fine Arts and Music Division for some time to come, but already the growing on-line version has been greeted with great enthusiasm.

For the time being, our Dynix system provides a song title keyword search, which can then be further limited by additional song title keywords. Even this 2-step process works quickly and efficiently. We're hopeful that refinements to our present on-line catalogue, or selection of a new Web-based product (now under very preliminary consideration), will provide exact song title search. With this in mind, we're putting each title into a separate "t" subfield within the contents note, so that exact title machine indexing can proceed easily.

As a by-product of the printed music contents project, our sound recordings contents are now accessible too--again, a boon for pop music materials, for which we have never provided analytics.

On the reference front, the Fine Arts and Music Division, headed by John Cull, has recently hired Ross Bliss as its music specialist for the coming year (a temporary assignment created by the usual "musical chairs" of any large multi-branch library system).

As for cataloguing, I continue to "do" music (as well as science and technology), now ably assisted by Annette Krammer for printed music. I'm into the second year of what I hope will be an indefinite jobshare, so I have more time to dabble in Scandinavian and Scottish folk fiddling. I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of my new "nyckelharpa" (key fiddle) from Sweden.

• John Gibbs

Univ. of Washington Music Library announces that Judy Sheung-Chuk Tsou has been appointed Head, Music Library. Judy will assume her new position in January. Judy has been Assistant Head, Music Library at University of California at Berkeley for the past ten years.

• Beverly Stafford

Here are some projects in the music collection this past year I have worked on and some developed by other staff members:

We received special funding last year for sheet music acquisitions for keyboard, violin, and cello to purchase replacement and Urtext editions. The cataloging staff has been busy with these and many of them are out on the shelves. I just finished a rather detailed report on the status of the sheet music collection with statistics, in preparation for the budget planning process. In doing so I discovered that our library checks out an average of 4100 scores each month!

Another set of gift funds was used for new chamber music scores with parts.

Acquisitions of scores by Tomas Svoboda, Portland composer, published by Thomas Stengland, one copy for reference and one for circulation, including interlibrary loan. A goal is to add more Oregon composers' works.

Music cataloging projects: Barbara Rhyne, now here as a library volunteer, along with a library staff member in our department, have been working a full year on retrospective popular song indexing in the online catalog of our music scores to improve reference access. This work has made a difference in finding song titles in the online catalog for reference questions. Cataloging staff have also worked on updating cataloging to full MARC records for older scores with incomplete entries. We have established new categories for scores of Oregon composers, to transfer copies to reference in the Oregon Collection. I found that we have scores of a number of lesser-known Oregon composers from the early part of the century, which were out on the open shelves, and had not been checked out for a long time. One is Carrie Adams, who composed church music from 1910-1930; we have many pieces by her, Christmas pageants, and other music. Amazing to think that at one time or another she must have come in this same library building since it has been here since the earliest years of this century.

I developed a set of public classes for teaching library users how to search the online catalog for music, and a second class for music on the WWW. These are taught bimonthly in rotation.

We have been working here on web-based reference services to handle phone and online requests coming in through the library web site. We get interesting song & music questions, and I am impressed by how busy this service is and overall how well it works.

As part of a committee, I have been working on adaptive technology access in the library. We have one terminal in our Humanities department with JAWS (converts text to speech for the online catalog and WWW searches), and Zoomtext (enlarges text). Learning this has been fascinating, another way of processing information which for me has not been easy as a visual-oriented person. There are many parallels to processing by sound alone which is common in learning music by ear. I am still working on this and I have to review a lot. We went to the Portland office of the Oregon Commission for the Blind recently. As a musician, it was amazing to me how quickly the director, a blind person, processed sounds. He can hear and understand words spoken at 350+ words per minute on the software. Many interesting music parallels for all of this.

Personal projects: This past year I was in a trio, consisting of a soprano, a lute player, and myself (Baroque and Renaissance flute). We worked on a whole set of dance music pieces, some Handel arias, and Scottish Renaissance music, a beautiful set of pieces, and presented these in 2 concerts. However, this has now all evaporated since the singer has moved away. Now I am back to solo flute until another ensemble opportunity arises. Just for fun I am experimenting on improvising from solo flute pieces, taking little phrases from the Telemann Fantasies for flute and playing variations as ideas come up. A second activity is a women's dance group I play for, English garland dancing. We took part in a large Morris ale this past summer with groups from all over the west coast. This was a lot of fun to see dancers from other places. We went up to Multnomah Falls and all around Portland taking turns with our dance groups. We had good turnouts and people seemed to enjoy the performances. Aside from this, I enlarged my house, a shocking project.

I enjoyed meeting many of the MLA Pacific Northwest music people at the convention in LA last spring, and look forward to the next time. Hope all is well with all of you.

• Terry Horner

Since the implementation of our DRA system about three years ago, we have finally completed most of our larger clean-up projects in the Music Library. We have also eliminated a backlog of about 25 shelves of scores and are now current in our cataloguing of videorecordings, microforms and CD's. Space remains a problem. We have nowhere to shelve a very generous gift of around 700 CD's from three different donors this past summer! We have now completed at least brief records in our recon project which will allow us to dispose of the card catalogue to make space for new CD cabinets. We are now in the process of overlaying the brief recon records with full records from the University of Toronto and University of Alberta. This will be followed by a data base walk to provide full records for anything missed.

On a personal level, I haven't taken any exotic trips this year, but have been spending time in getting to better know the Pacific Northwest area. I expect I will be attending the MLA meeting in Kentucky in February and visiting friends and family in the eastern part of Canada and the US this summer.

• Laurel Sercombe

The University of Washington Ethnomusicology Archives received two small grants for film preservation work in 1999, one from the National Film Preservation Foundation and one from the American Film Institute. We are also close to having a web-accessible catalog of our musical instrument collection up and running, which is sort of a dress rehearsal for getting our archival recordings catalog on the web sometime...somehow.

Otherwise I'm working on my dissertation, or it's working on me.

• Leslie Bennett

Now that the rains are here, I'm not spending so much time in my garden-and having a hectic fall!

The fall quarter started out the first week of school with an MLA Board meeting in Baltimore-sounds fun, but it really is lots of work. The only things that compensate for it is doing work for the organization I love-and, of course, the great eating! I'm convinced that one of the qualifications of future Board members must be a love of food! The Board did long hours of going through reports from all the committees, chapters, etc.-yes, we really do read them! and it's worth slipping in something interesting to keep us on topic!- and helping to make sure that the MLA runs smoothly. I want to thank you all who voted to put another PNW'er on the Board. I'm the only person on the Board living west of the Rockie Mountains, so I'm trying to represent us out here in the hinterlands. Let me know if there are regional concerns you would like addressed at the Board meetings- or anything else you feel you want us to know. And be sure to nominate your colleagues here for future elections-we need all the input we can get!

The School of Music at the UO had its tenth-year visit from NASM last spring-and the results looked good for the Library. However, if any of you have good lists of jazz technique and pedagogy books, please share them with me-we're greatly lacking in them, and the jazz program here is growing in leaps and bounds!

I hope to see all of you at Louisville and, Seattle-ites willing, the PNW/MLA meeting in May.

• Cindy Richardson

Uppermost on the minds of most of us at King County Library System's Service Center is our move next May to a new building in Issaquah (good-bye easy work commute!). With that in mind, I am trying ever more vigorously to reduce the cataloging backlog that will need to be moved. I've found working in OCLC's CatME software to be a great assist with this goal, and I recommend it to anyone who hasn't tried it yet.

My department will welcome a new manager on November 8. The four of us in Cataloging and Processing Services who are librarians have been an interim management team for five months now and the novelty wore off some time ago!

I've had an opportunity to do some mentoring recently with a student from the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia. Katia Strieck was eager to gain experience in cataloging music sound recordings and I was eager to have some help, so it's been a good match. In formal terms it is an elective Professional Experience Project for credit. She had previously done a required two-week practicum at Seattle Public Library where she worked in public services and in cataloging with our recently retired colleague Elaine Weeks. She is assisting me three days a week for eight weeks, and it has proved a delightful and productive experience. Out of this very pleasant necessity I have finally created much of the documentation of our local practices that I had always intended to commit to paper. In the process I've had many opportunities to sharpen my word-processing skills, though my ability to produce a document that reflects elegant formatting choices still falls far below my aspirations. In any case, I recommend the experience should you have an opportunity to fit a library school student into your work routine.

• Kirsten Walsh

At the UBC Music Library we've been doing various things to cope with our space problem. Over 9,000 "low use" books have joined our pre-1980 bound periodicals in the Main Library in the last year. The Music Cataloguers have completed Recon to the point that we now have brief records for everything, so we're planning to get rid of our Card Catalogue soon (except for the Subject cards). Then we'll be able to rearrange the front area somewhat, and add some cabinets for more cd's and oversize scores. We've received a number of gift cd's this year, but don't have room to shelve them until this whole train of events takes place. My older daughter Eileen is in 1st year Music at UBC as a Clarinet major, and it's a new and fun experience having her in the same building. I'm getting a new perspective on undergraduate music students, including their use of the Music Library! This year's high point was a trip with both my girls to the Galapagos Islands and Ecuador. It was a fabulous holiday, sailing around the islands on a trimaran, walking right up to blue-footed boobies and albatrosses and giant tortoises, and snorkeling amongst penguins and sea lions and other exotic creatures! I'll miss the MLA meeting in Louisville, but am looking forward to catching up with all of the PNW Chapter folks at our spring meeting. Later in the year I'll be attending Toronto2000, the mega music meeting of about 15 organizations including the Canadian Association of Music Libraries, AMS, SMT, and others.

If you are a member of your regional chapter, but do not belong to the national Music Library Association, consider the benefits of national membership:

Now available on the chapter web page

2^nd edition

For order information for paper copies contact the webmaster.

CHAPTER OFFICERS 1999-2000

Chair: John Brower, Seattle Public Library

Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect: Kirsten Walsh, University of British Columbia

Past Chair: Catherine Gerhart, University of Washington

Secretary-Treasurer: Harry Miller, Sunhawk.com

Newsletter Editor: Terry Horner, University of British Columbia

listserv: pnwmla-l@u.washington.edu

webpage: http://www.lib.washington.edu/music/pnwmla/pnwmla.html

Leslie Bennett

John Brower

Monica Fazekas

303-2623 Richmond Rd.

Victoria BC, Canada V8R 4S8

University of Victoria

1-250-721-8259

fazekasm@uvic.ca

Catherine Gerhart

John Gibbs

Christine Grandy

Terry Horner

Deborah Jones

Dorothea Kelsey

Sheila Knutsen

Marsha Maguire

Kevin McLaughlin

Harry A.W. Miller

Deborah Pierce

Thomas Quigley

Marcia Reed

Barbara Rhyne

Cindy Richardson

Anna E. Seaberg

Laurel Sercombe

Carolyn Shandler

Kate Shelby-Martin

Fran Smith

Beverly B. Stafford

Melissa Taylor

Kirsten Walsh

Elaine Weeks

Betty Woerner

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Dues are $10.00 per year, payable in U.S. dollars to the Pacific NW Chapter, Music Library Association. Official membership entitles you to vote at business meetings or on official ballots, to serve as a Chapter officer, and to receive the Fall newsletter and notification of the Spring meeting. The dues year begins at the spring meeting and ends at the next spring meeting. This form is intended for new members only. Please send this form along with your dues to:

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Please make checks payable to Music Library Association, Inc. Mail to: Music Library Association, P.O. Box 322, Bowling Green, OH 43402. Allow 6-8 weeks for processing of new memberships. The Music Library Association is a non-profit, tax-exempt professional organization.