Table of Contents
Note from the Chair
Register for NEMLA Spring 2025 Meeting
Noteworthy News
— Changes for Brendan Higgins
— Welcome to David Moore
— Marci Cohen Retires
— Patrick Quinn Moves to Tufts
— Book Launch Celebration
— Berklee Library migrates to FOLIO
— Bringing an Opera by Edmond Dédé to the Stage
— Harvard AI Cataloging Project Update
— Performance by Rwandan guitarist Deo Salvator
NEMLA Officers
Publication Information
**************************************************
A Note from the Chair
NEMLA has had the good fortune that Anne Adams and her Program Committee have been hard at work to give us a terrific program planned for this coming April 11, 2025. Thank you in advance to the Committee and Anne for this forthcoming conference. Be sure to investigate the Program details for more information. I have also been very grateful that so many NEMLA members have answered the call of our organization and have volunteered for committees, and we will be needing you again this year!
I thank the Nominating Committee, Terry Simpkins, Anna Kijas and Emily Colucci for working hard to have a full slate of officers and committee members for this coming year.
Please note, for the April Spring Meeting, that while there may be some “ceremonial” changes during the meeting, the actual switch to new NEMLA roles will begin on July 1, per our modified by-laws passed in the last election. This change will affect and include elected leadership and members of committees, whose terms will end this year, 2025. Their current roles will end June 30. New committee members will start on July 1, as will the terms of our elected leadership.
As part of the Spring Meeting, we will have our annual business meeting and get our usual reports. We will also hear a report read about the NEMLA Archive with some updates.
I’m hoping we will have a few minutes set aside to receive suggestions from our membership about more structural changes for our chapter given the ever-changing landscape of music librarianship. First, I believe we need to create an ad hoc committee to write up some contingency plans, should there ever be a leadership vacuum, which our by-laws did not envision. That would be the beginning of a much longer process, to add any needed additions to our by-laws.
It has also been difficult these last several years (even aside from the pandemic) to recruit leadership for our organization. I have been wondering about what precise difficulties we need to surmount to ease this problem. Some of the factors involved, I believe, can include the following possible reasons (but they are probably not the only factors). One, of course, is that many of us have already served for years on NEMLA or MLA committees or leadership. Since we’re a small group, we’ve “run through the roster” a number of times. 2) Additionally, libraries today, in general, are not replacing all the librarians who are retiring or leaving for other jobs — so possibly our region is not getting as many potential new members as in the past. 3) Many librarians find themselves assigned extra duties and workloads in their daily jobs, which limits their ability to have a time commitment to outside professional organizational work. 4) Many of our membership are already involved in national MLA, making it even harder to take on additional tasks for our local chapter. 5) Another thing that has been mentioned in the mix is that fact that the Vice-Chair role also takes on such a heavy programming load.
At our meeting, I’d like to open the floor for some suggestions for ways of lessening or spreading out the burden of the Vice-Chair that may encourage more people interested in taking on the role. If you have more ideas to help solve some of our structural issues, I’d love to hear them!
Lastly, I encourage our membership to read the MLA’s “Supplement to MLA’s Diversity Statement” which was published this past February. It is located at https://wp.musiclibraryassoc.org/supplement-to-mlas-diversity-statement/.
I would like to personally endorse this strongly worded and encouraging statement by MLA’s Board of Directors. Just because the political winds change does not mean our commitment to justice has changed or we should veer from doing what’s right. We welcome all music librarians, student workers and staff to be part of our music library community. At NEMLA, you are welcome and you are valued.
Judith S. Pinnolis
NEMLA Chair
Associate Director, Instruction and Engagement
Berklee College of Music/The Boston Conservatory at Berklee
Boston, MA
Register for NEMLA’s Spring 2025 Meeting
April 11, 2023 at Hayden Memorial Library, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The registration deadlines for the NEMLA spring meeting have been extended to April 2 (for in-person registration) and April 9 (virtual registration).
SCHEDULE of the DAY
9:00am – 9:45am – Reception and welcome (a representative from Theodore Front will be present during this time for those who are interested in connecting)
9:45am – Welcome
Welcome address, Dr. Chris Bourg, Director of MIT Libraries
10:00-10:45am – Not Just a PDF on a Website: Outreach to Composition Students about Copyright and Self-Publishing
Marci Cohen, recently retired as Head of the Music Library at Boston University
10:45am – 11:00am – Break
11:00am – 12:00n This Class Is a Work in Progress: Reflecting on Teaching
NEMLA Instruction committee, Carol Lubkowski, Kerry Masteller, and Donna Maher
12:00n – 1:30pm – Lunch (on your own)
1:30pm – 2:00pm – Business meeting
2:00pm – 2:45pm – Afrofuturism and Otherworldliness: Sun Ra, Parliament-Funkadelic, George Clinton, Erykah Badu, Octavia E. Butler, Digable Planets, Janelle Monae, Flying Lotus, Grace Jones, Missy Elliott…
A discussion of the current exhibit at the Lewis Music Library
Avery Boddie, Lewis Music Library Department Head
3:00pm – Reception, Lewis Music Library
3:30pm -4:00pm – Optional tour of the new Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building (Building W18) at MIT.
>Read about the presentations and presenters
>Event details and Registration
Regular registration (until April 2): $15
Student/Retiree registration (until April 2): $10
First-time Attendee registration: FREE
Virtual (livestream) registration (until April 9): $8
Noteworthy News
Changes for Brendan Higgins
Sadly, the Instruction Team at Berklee Library bade farewell to Brendan Higgins this January, 2025. Brendan has been a longtime employee of Berklee and was an exemplary teacher and librarian. He will be sorely and deeply missed! Brendan will be bringing his reference and instruction skills across the Charles River to Harvard University, in their Loeb Music Library, as their Music Librarian for Learning and Engagement.
Welcome to David Moore
David Moore, a Berklee drum set performance major and alum, and the recent Project Manager for the ILS migration project at Berklee, has accepted the position of Associate Director of User Experience and Operations at the Berklee Library. David started this position on Feb 10, 2025 and will continue to work on the FOLIO project as well. We congratulate David on his new role at Berklee.
News about Brendan and David submitted by Judy Pinnolis.
Marci Cohen retires
Marci Cohen recently retired from Boston University Libraries, where she worked from 2015 to 2025, most of that time in the Music Library. She considers herself semi-retired and will remain active in NEMLA and MLA. She is open to consulting, freelancing, writing, and project work. Her email address is rockhackcohen at yahoo.com.
Submitted by Marci Cohen.
Patrick Quinn moves to Tufts
Patrick has recently changed jobs from the New England Conservatory to become the new Research Librarian for Music at Tufts University’s Lilly Music Library. His new email is patrick.quinn at tufts.edu if you would like to contact him.
Submitted by Patrick Quinn.
Book Launch Celebration
Both Patrick and Marci recently participated in an exciting book launch webinar, talking about their chapter “Music Library Instruction for ESOL Students” in Music Information Literacy: Inclusion and Advocacy (edited by Kathleen Abromeit and Dyani Sabin).
Berklee Library Migrates to FOLIO
In January 2025, the Berklee Library migrated from Evergreen and Koha to FOLIO. This exciting unification of library collections of the Boston Conservatory Library, the Berklee College Library, and the Valencia campus Library has been made possible in part due to Berklee becoming full members of the Fenway Library Organization (FLO), a consortium of academic and special libraries in Massachusetts. Later this semester Berklee will become part of the Commonwealth Catalog, a platform for libraries to share items across Massachusetts.
Submitted by Jennifer Hunt, Associate Dean, Berklee Library.
Bringing an Opera by Edmond Dédé to the Stage
Andrea Cawelti, Ward Music Cataloger, Houghton Library, Harvard University, was interviewed for a New York Times article in connection with the performance of the earliest (presently known) opera by an African American composer, Edmond Dédé, which she had (re)discovered in one of John Ward’s collections and cataloged back in 2008.
Cawelti writes, “In an amazing and somewhat miraculous sequence of events, the opera was performed by OperaCreole and Opera Lafayette Feb. 3, 5, and 7. The entire experience was one of the most satisfying in my life: It is so rare that catalogers actually get thanked for their work! “
“[The article] really shows the incredibly complex process of bringing a show from zero to score to reality, step by step. A process with which many of us are familiar, but which the general public often doesn’t get …. I’m hoping that this wonderful project will create more support for opera and other musical projects through other local pipelines, particularly for those composers who have been unjustly erased from our history.”
A follow-up article on the opera by Alex Ross appeared in the New Yorker.
Harvard AI Cataloging Project Update
Andrea Cawelti has been awarded a small grant from Harvard to carry on her sheet music cataloging via AI. The grant will enable her to hire assistance for the project so if anyone knows of a student interested in such work, please contact her.
Andrea presented on AI transcription of sheet music metadata at the last NEMLA meeting and just followed that up with a presentation at the MLA meeting on March 18, 2025. The updated talk included an in-depth section by Harvard student Helen He on Python scripting. The Python portion of the project takes ChatGPT transcription to the next level by enabling the creation of finding aids from CSV outputs.
Submitted by Andrea Cawelti.
Performance by Rwandan guitarist Deo Salvator
To celebrate the closing of the Spirit of Inanga: A Gallery of African Musical Instruments at Olin Library exhibition (Wesleyan University), curator Chance Kinyange Boas M’25 arranged for a performance by Rwandan guitarist Deo Salvator, known for his fingerstyle technique and translating inanga tunes to the guitar. Salvator is the founder of Finger Pickers in Africa, a collective dedicated to building cross-border intercultural understanding through music making. Chance designed the exhibition and several related events as part of his graduate assistantship at Wesleyan’s World Music Archives & Music Library.
Submitted by Jennifer Hadley.
NEMLA Officers
Publication Information
New England Quarter Notes is published quarterly in the fall, winter, spring, and summer.
Back issues may be accessed from:
http://nemla.musiclibraryassoc.org/resources/newsletters/
Address all correspondence concerning editorial matters to:
Jennifer Hadley
jthom at wesleyan.edu
Inquiries concerning subscription, membership and change of address should be directed to:
Hannah Ferello
hannah.ferello at necmusic.edu
Membership year runs July 1st to June 30th.
Regular Personal Membership:$12.00
Student and Retired Membership:$6.00
Institutional Membership$16.00
Return to the New England Music Library Association home page