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Best of Chapters 2023

Each year the Best of Chapters committee accepts the nomination of one session presentation from each local MLA chapter. The three committee members evaluate the sessions separately and rate them based on a variety of factors: relevance of the topic to current issues in music librarianship, originality and innovation, organization and significance, research quality, and potential appeal to a national-level audience. The rankings from each member are combined to determine the two highest-ranked sessions that will be presented at the next national MLA meeting.  At the 2023 annual conference in St.Louis, MO, the winning presentation was “Supporting Textbook Affordability via

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MLA Papakhian Award Winners

At its annual meeting in March 2023, the Music Library Association presented the A. Ralph Papakhian Special Achievement Award to Jerry McBride for his courage and acumen, placing MLA on stronger financial footing. This award is long overdue. Jerry was MLA president when the organization took a challenging financial hit in 2010. Individuals and institutions were still dealing with the effects of a recession, and it was because of the losses we incurred that Jerry initiated the bold but controversial move to restructure MLA’s finances, notably to build our reserves to be able to withstand cancellation of an annual meeting,

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MLA Citation 2023

The Music Library Association congratulates Dr. Mark McKnight as the recipient of its 2023 MLA Citation, the association’s highest honor. His impact on the Music Library Association, the field, and the scholarly arena is exemplary.  Mark has set a very high standard, one which has been a great inspiration to those who have been  privileged to know, work, or interact with him. The majority of Mark’s career as a music librarian has been at the University of North Texas, where he has served in various capacities from 1990 to his retirement in 2019. From Assistant Music Librarian to Head Librarian,

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Release of How to Write About Music (Ebook)

New York. — March 10, 2023 — Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM) releases the third edition of How to Write About Music: The RILM Manual of Style, edited by James R. Cowdery, as an ebook. The manual addresses a multitude of special problems faced by writers on music—problems rarely solved by general writing guides. It applies an international perspective to matters often handled piecemeal and in ethnocentric fashion: work titles, manuscript sources, transliteration, non-Western theoretical systems, opus and catalogue numbers, and pitch and chord names, to name just a few. Detailed guidelines are provided for the bibliographic handling of standard print,

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David Dalton Research Competition

The David Dalton Research Competition awards cash prizes for original scholarly research and the opportunity for winning papers to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, The Journal of the American Viola Society. The current cash prize amounts for this competition are $400 for first prize and $200 for second prize. The new Dalton Harmony Prize prize would be awarded to a scholar of color in the amount of $400, and will not disqualify the prize winner’s eligibility for the Dalton Research Competition first or second prize. The Harmony Prize is awarded to winning research focusing on non-canonic, underrepresented, and marginalized composers,

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A Model for Purchase and Licensing of Digital Scores

Last week, Library Futures published Toward a New Access Paradigm: Digital Ownership for Libraries and the Public, a report on the state of digital ownership for libraries. Music libraries have been grappling with the move from physical content formats to digital formats since the early 2000s when famously, the Los Angeles Philharmonic began releasing live iTunes-only performances. Despite numerous attempts, these performances were never acquired for preservation and access by any university or public library and users must rely on having the technology and personal resources to access them through Apple platforms.  Today, libraries are also increasingly engaged in conversations

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MLA Newsletter Issue 218 (Nov./Dec. 2022-Jan. 2023)

Read the latest issue of the MLA Newsletter, featuring an update from MLA’s President, spotlights on the Recording Secretary and News Editor, and information about MLA’s sponsorship of the Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online (SUCHO) initiative.

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New Additions to RILM Music Encyclopedias

RILM Music Encyclopedias has just added two new titles into its continuously expanding collection of historical and current reference texts: The 2023 additions to RILM Music Encyclopedias enrich the content of the collection with two complementary titles that document the music history and musical life of Southeastern Europe. Both reference works were edited by the distinguished Croatian music historian Krešimir Kovačević (1913–92), who was active as a music writer, critic, teacher, conductor, and editor-in-chief of the Croatian music periodical Arti musices (1973–79). Both works were published by the Jugoslavenski Leksikografski Zavod in Zagreb and represent a collaboration of the best scholars from all six Yugoslav

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REFERENCE SOURCES SPOTLIGHT: Researching Opera in Hungary and Sweden

Although there are numerous tools and sources for documenting operatic performance in Western Europe, tracing performances, performers, and composers at Europe’s periphery can often be a frustrating and painstaking endeavor for researchers. Two newer databases, however, offer invaluable and efficient access to records of stage performances in Budapest and Stockholm. Opera DIGITár (henceforth DIGITár) provides comprehensive data on performance in Hungary under the auspices of the State Opera; the Operans repertoararkiv (henceforth Repertoararkiv) provides the same for performance presented by the Swedish Royal Theater in Sweden (note that although the database name refers to the opera, it also includes records

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MLA Newsletter Issue 217 (Sept.-Oct. 2022)

Read the latest issue of the MLA Newsletter, featuring an update from MLA’s President, a summary of MLA’s recent town hall for special officer and editor recruitment, Chapter updates, and a travel log from July’s IAML Conference in Prague.

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