Hayden Memorial Library, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Registration form and conference website here
SCHEDULE of the DAY
9:00am – 9:45am – Reception and welcome
Welcome, Judith Pinnolis, NEMLA president
(a representative from Theodore Front will be present during this time for those who are interested in connecting)
Lewis Music Library
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
Jake Zelikovsky, Music Library Assistant at Lewis Music Library
Laura Crook Brisson, Music Library Assistant at Lewis Music Library
3:00pm – Reception, Lewis Music Library
3:30pm -4:00pm – concert with the LogaRhythms, Music Library
Sessions
Not just a PDF on a Website: Outreach to Composition Students about Copyright and Self-Publishing
Raising the subject of eScores among any gathering of music librarians will prompt lamentations of woe. With the floodgates of eScore self-published open, music library workers are twisting themselves in knots dealing with the binding and copyright implications. What if, instead of just talking to ourselves, we educated the upcoming generation of composers on these considerations? What if we did it from the perspective of teaching them how to make money from their compositions? This session will discuss a workshop created for the composition students at Boston University, including its genesis and reception. The workshop addressed performing rights organizations, the basics of copyright from the composers’ perspective, why they should include licensing terms that fit with library and performer needs, editing and typesetting their scores and parts, and how to publicize their works to the library market. Attendees will gain knowledge on how to replicate this with their own constituencies for the benefit of composers, performers, and libraries.
Marci Cohen recently retired as the Head of the Music Library at Boston University Libraries, where she worked 2015-2025, primarily in the Music Library but also for a stint as Head of Instruction and Consultation. She was previously a reference librarian at Berklee College of Music and a Multimedia Librarian at Northbrook (IL) Public Library. An active member of the Music Library Association, she served as the editor of the organization’s copyright website. Prior to entering librarianship, Marci was an intellectual property paralegal and a popular music journalist. She has delivered guest lectures on copyright for the Simmons University music librarianship course. Marci earned a BS, Economics, from the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania; an MLS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and an MA in Music from Tufts University.
This Class Is a Work in Progress: Reflecting on Teaching
The NEMLA Instruction Committee will present a series of instruction dilemmas and/or modules-in-progress to the attendees. We will solicit feedback and discussion from the attendees regarding solutions and improvements for these instruction problems, to make this an interactive session. Attendees who do not routinely offer library instruction will learn about methods their teaching colleagues use in the classroom, and how they assess and rework their teaching. Attendees who do teach will be able to share their experience, challenges, and tips for success.
Carol Lubkowski is the Music Librarian at Wellesley College; from 2014-2016 she was the Public Services Librarian at the University of Hartford’s Allen Library. Carol received her BA in music from Wesleyan University, her MM in music composition from The Boston Conservatory, and her MLS from Indiana University. She has presented at the 2016, 2023, and 2024 MLA Meetings and the 2020 New Music Gathering. Carol has also published four reviews in Notes. Her interests are the music of living women composers, feminist punk, and the future of audio recordings in libraries.
Kerry Carwile Masteller is the Music Librarian for Scholarly Communications and Digital Programs at Harvard University’s Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library. She works in research services and represents the Music Library in the areas of scholarly communications and open access, digital accessibility, copyright, and strategic digitization as applied to music. Much of her day-to-day work involves working to make the library’s collections more open and accessible to people around the world. She is currently suffering a pedagogical crisis of confidence related to “college students” AND Boolean (operator* OR logic OR search*).
A librarian at the University of Maine at Augusta, Donna Maher holds a masters degree in woodwind performance and a Ph.D in Music Education from Texas Tech University. Her bachelors degree is from Arizona State University. Following a full-time public school and collegiate music teaching career, she earned her Masters in Library and Information Science from the University of South Carolina and is delighted to make Maine home. In her spare time, she raises two dogs and her husband.
Afrofuturism and Otherworldliness : Sun Ra, Parliament-Funkadelic, George Clinton, Erykah Badu, Octavia E. Butler, Digable Planets, Janelle Monae, Flying Lotus, Grace Jones, Missy Elliott, and more…
This exhibit celebrates the visionary contributions of Afrofuturist artists across various genres and mediums. From the cosmic jazz of Sun Ra and the psychedelic funk of Parliament-Funkadelic and George Clinton, to the neo-soul of Erykah Badu and the sci-fi narratives of Octavia E. Butler, these artists have pushed the boundaries of creativity and imagination. The exhibit may be viewed in the Lewis Music Library following the presentation.
Please note: because of the location of the exhibit, access to the exhibit itself will only be possible for in-person attendees. The presentation will, however, be available to virtual attendees.
Avery Boddie (he/him) is the Rosalind Denny Lewis Music Library Department Head, a position he’s held since 2021. Avery holds an MLIS (’17) and a MM in Trumpet Performance (’14) from the University of Maryland, College Park.
Jake Zelikovsky currently works as a Music Library Assistant at MIT’s Lewis Music Library. They hold a Bachelor’s in jazz performance from Washington University in St. Louis where they studied upright bass, and are now working on an MLIS at Simmons University. Jake has extensively toured the US and the UK with various DIY music projects, and outside of the library performs as a noise musician, sound artist, and experimental filmmaker.
Laura Crook Brisson is the Music Library Assistant at MIT Libraries and a horn player based in Boston. She is the fourth horn in the Vista Philharmonic Orchestra at Groton Hill Music Center and regularly performs with several of the region’s professional ensembles, including the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Rhode Island Philharmonic, and New Bedford Symphony. Laura is the volunteer archivist for the Boston Camerata, and in spring 2024, she joined the board of the American Big Band Preservation Society.
Before returning to Massachusetts, Laura lived in Washington, DC, where she worked in artistic operations for the Cathedral Choral Society at Washington National Cathedral. Additionally, she was a founding member of the DC-based wind quintet District5, a nonprofit ensemble dedicated to performing new and underrepresented music and sharing educational programs with young musicians in the DC area. During her tenure, District5 received a competitive Chamber Music America classical commissioning grant and recorded an album of original transcriptions of Chopin preludes for wind quintet. She can be heard on their debut album.
Laura holds a B.M. in Horn Performance from Northwestern University, an M.M. from the University of Maryland, and an M.S. in Library Science from Simmons University.