Art and Music Collection

A. Purpose

1. To support courses and research in the Department of Art and in the School of Music, as well as courses in the Department of Design, Family, and Consumer Sciences, particularly Design and Textiles.

2. To support related courses in other disciplines within the Humanities, Fine Arts, and Education.

3. To support institutes, conferences, workshops, and other programs sponsored by UNI.

4. To serve as a resource to professional organizations in the state, individual school districts, public libraries and area organizations committed to the Humanities, especially in the Fine Arts.

5. To support art and music literacy and intellectual freedom in the arts, as well as aesthetic appreciation in general.

The Art & Music resources are housed in two locations within the Rod Library Building, at the Art & Music Section on the 4th floor (generally reference sources, current periodicals and indexes, audio-visual equipment & materials) and in the general Stacks on the First and Fourth Floors (monographs and art books, exhibition catalogs, historical sets, music series, complete works of composers, complete miniature and orchestral scores, full scores, back issues of periodicals, etc.) with the rest of the library collections.

Reference and other titles ordered for the collection are usually located within the Art & Music Collection depending on the nature, format, and currency of the item. Some reference titles in dance and other performing arts disciplines are located in the general Reference Collection on the main floor.

Spoken word recordings of classical plays, documentary, oral history and poetry are housed within the audiovisual collection in the Art & Music Collection.

The Art and Music Collection houses indexes and abstracts for art, archaeology, and music and there is support for general and related information sources in the Library's general Reference holdings, including commercial and non-commercial databases and catalogs on-line and in CD-ROM format.

Titles in related subject areas such as education, psychology, business, photography, archaeology, architecture and graphic design are located within the general Stacks, and related reference titles in the general Reference Collection on the main floor.

Bibliographers in the various subject-oriented disciplines usually refer requests for art, music, design, fashion, textiles, and photography titles and sound recordings to the Art & Music Librarian. Dance and other performing arts related titles are referred to the appropriate subject bibliographers, as are interdisciplinary titles.

Patron requests for popular titles in the areas of art, music and design that do not meet the criteria for acquisition by Rod Library are generally referred to public libraries in the area.

Other Resources/Cooperative Agreements

Music teaching materials and course related textbooks generally are available in the Music Education Resource Room located in the School of Music.

The vertical files provide non-catalogued materials that supplement the information in the Art & Music reference section; these are mainly newsletters and other miscellaneous information received by mail.

There are some art-related periodical titles available to faculty in the Art Department.

Using online databases such as RILM, IIMP, the Art & Music Collection staff will assist patrons in identifying resources in other libraries. Patrons are then directed to the library’s InterLibrary Loan Desk for assistance in accessing off-campus resources.

B. Primary LC Classes and Other Cataloging Systems

The Art, Music and Design resources fall within a number of Library of Congress classifications:

GT HISTORY OF COSTUME
HD, HF FASHION
M MUSIC
N ART
PN STAGE COSTUME
TJ, TS, TX APPAREL STRUCTURE, FASHION, CLOTHING
TR PHOTOGRAPHY

Recordings of music and spoken word are classified with a modified version of the LC classes as follows: Art (letter N), Music (letter M), Philosophy and Religion (letters B, BL), History (letters D, E, F), Folklore and Dance instruction (letters GR, GV), Literature (letter P) and the Sciences (letters Q, QC, QL)

C. Collection Guidelines

1. Scope of Coverage

a. Language
i. Printed Materials

The primary language of acquisition is English; however, reference sets and historical sets in French, German, Italian and Spanish are acquired on a selective basis. The same is true of periodicals and serials. Exhibition catalogs can be in the major European languages as well as Japanese and other foreign languages.

ii. Scores

When available, performance and study scores in English translations are preferred to monolingual foreign language; because of editorial and critical annotations, polyglot scores are also preferred to non-English scores when available. Otherwise there is no language limitation for scores in "Western Music" notation.

iii. Non Print/Recordings

a. In the case of sound recordings of vocal music (art songs, opera, stage works, oratorios, etc.) acquisition is in the original language of the work; e.g French, German, Italian, Russian, English, and Spanish.

b. Geographical Guidelines

While the major portion of the music curriculum emphasizes Western Culture, the Art and Design curricula include all areas of the world producing art and artifacts. Thus, there is no actual geographical limitation on origin of publications, except for language (See above Section 1: a Languages).

c. Chronological Guidelines

Recently published scholarly works are emphasized since these deal with current research, trends, and issues. Histories of various forms of Art are also collected. Although the Art & Music Collection does not systematically collect old and rare books, when recommendations for relevant out-of-print titles are received specialized book vendors are contacted for their acquisition.

2. Treatment of Subject

The reference shelves in the Art & Music Collection contain selected bibliographic tools in the subject areas of Art, Design, and Music. The reference area includes encyclopedias and dictionaries such as Benezit's Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart Allgemeine Enzyklopaedie der Musik, and The New Grove, and language dictionaries such as Cassell's Italian Dictionary. Other sources include the latest directories and biographical dictionaries, (e.g., The Official Museum Directory, International Who's Who in Music and Musicians' Directory, Contemporary Photographers), price guide publications (International Auction Records, Miller's Antiques Handbook & Price Guides and Auction Prices of American Artists), other music bibliographical sources such as thematic catalogs (e.g. Muller von Asow's Richard Strauss Thematisches Verzeichnis) and bibliographies (F. Pazdirek's Universal Handbuch der Musikliteratur aller Zeiten und Voelker), and catalogs such as Repertoire International des Sources Musicales and the Ronald Alley Catalogue of The Tate Gallery Collection of Modern Art other than British. Indexes and abstracts, as well as periodicals, complement the sources elsewhere in the Art & Music Collection.

Although the Art & Music section does collect popular music resources at a minimum level (with emphasis on bibliographic, reference and biographical materials, and very selective recordings) it does not systematically collect materials dealing with subjects other than classical music or jazz.

3. Types of Materials

a. Print

Acquisitions include periodicals, reference works, monographic series, academic and society publications, and scores (basically study and performance scores following established parameters). Some art and music lexicons are collected as are some festschriften.

The library in general does not collect multiple copies of the same work, except in the case of music study and performance copies where multiple scores are required for performance (i.e. works for two pianos, piano-scores for piano concertos, contemporary music scores which require additional copies of the same full score, etc.) All circulating print music is housed on the 4th floor in the music stacks area.

b. Audio

The preferred format for acquisition of sound recordings is the compact disc. The purchase of cassettes is considered only when compact disc is unavailable. The library does not actively seek to acquire audio recordings in 16rpm, 33 1/3rpm, or 78rpm formats. Reel-to-reel formats are acquired if and only if they are part of a study and/or performance score requirement.

The acquisition of multiple copies of the same piece of music by different performers is common practice, since they provide the student with a variety in standard and/or experimental interpretations so beneficial in the learning process. The spoken-word collection is only maintained, i.e., only replacements are acquired. There are also recordings of sound effects, animals, speeches, scientific and historical documentary discs. At the discretion of the Art & Music librarian, gifts may be added to the collection.

c. Other Formats: Videos, Electronic, Microforms

The Art & Music Collection includes videos (videocassettes and DVDs) In general, videos charged to the A & M non-print fund are intended to support the art and music curricula. Music videos typically include music performances, biographies, lectures, documentaries, and performance techniques or methods. Corresponding call numbers are usually M, ML, and MT. Other music-related videos, usually with subject headings such as MUSICAL FILMS, FEATURE FILMS, and FILM ADAPTATIONS, are sometimes purchased through other funds and tend to be classified with PN or other literature-related call numbers. These generally are located in the Multi Service Center video collection. Reference titles on microform may be purchased on a selective basis, (e.g., to replace missing hard copies and/or to acquire out of print titles).

4. Date of Publication

There is no particular limitation on the date of publication, although the latest and/or revised editions are generally preferred. Some reference titles are systematically acquired on an annual basis, while those items in less demand (auction records, directories, etc) are acquired on an alternate edition basis.

D. ALA Collecting Level Codes

ART
Art Education 3b
Art History 3b
Arts Management 2a
Art Gallery & Museum Administration 2a
Studio Art 3b
DESIGN
Clothing and Apparel 3a
Design and Human Environment 3a
Drafting 2a
Fashion 3a
History of Costume 2a
History of Interiors 3a
MUSIC
Applied Music 3
Music Techniques 3
Music Education and Methods 3
Music Theory 3
Music Literature 3

E. State of the Collection

Overall, the Art & Music Reference Collection is considered by faculty, students and evaluators to be excellent within the framework of a general university library. No attempt is made to develop a comprehensive research reference collection. In the areas of Design and Fashion, the collection is more limited in scope and breadth.

In the case of Art, emphasis has been on Art of the Modern Era (late 1800's to the present), with some emphasis in Renaissance to Modern Era. Photography has been treated generally from the artistic point of view, with little emphasis on technique.

The sound recording collection mostly emphasizes the Western Art Music tradition. Recent acquisitions in the genres of Jazz, Musical Theater, Folk, World Music, Country, Rock, Sacred, and Urban musics have significantly added breadth to the collection.

Dr. Alan Asher
Art & Music Librarian
Amended: November 2004; April 2013