Librarians: In their own words

I’ve been Principal Librarian of the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, Canada since 2000 and from 1987 I held the same position at the Winnipeg Symphony. Like almost all of my librarian colleagues, I started in the business as a playing musician (I majored in oboe and piano accompaniment) and somehow found my way into librarianship by chance. There’s one rather unusual fact about my particular situation. Many of us are married to musicians in the same orchestra, but in my case I’m married to our assistant librarian and we work 3 feet apart from each other all day and then go home together. We’ve been doing this for 20 years in Winnipeg and Ottawa so we’re used to it, but I don’t know if many couples could stand to work together in such a high intensity job. For us it has worked out very well, the only downside being that Greg doesn’t like it when I discuss work at home. Sometimes it is unavoidable, however.

I have to smile to myself – or cringe as the case may be – when a musician comes up to me and asks if “such and such” a piece is in. I know they think that the music arrives, we put it in the folders and that’s it. But there’s a huge difference between something being “in” and something being “ready.” Most musicians who haven’t spent any time in the library really have no idea how many hours we have to spend on preparation before the parts hit their folders. Whether it be cataloguing new arrivals, stamping and numbering the parts, checking for errata, putting in cuts, erasing dirty string parts and re-doing the bowings, fixing page turns, or other myriad jobs. But that’s just the music. What about all the other things that have to happen before we even get to the preparation? First we have to create a budget for the upcoming season and stick to it. We must place orders for the music we need to purchase throughout the year and research and locate the music we need to rent if it’s still under copyright and cannot be purchased. Many of us also provide all of the chorus parts for the choirs who perform with us. We have to contact our guest conductors to make sure we’re preparing the correct edition and liaise with them about cuts and markings. We answer questions from almost every member of the staff who needs to know about costs, durations, personnel information, program notes, etc. In our case we are also the personal librarians for our conductor Pinchas Zukerman, so we are constantly sending out his personal sets of music to orchestras around the globe with whom he performs or conducts. We have to constantly keep after our Artistic and Education Department planners to get the Pops and Kids programs finalized in good time so we can order the music in time to have it here and prepared for the concert that is next month already! All of this keeps us really busy, and some days I find I hardly have time to even touch a piece of sheet music. Luckily Greg is plugging away at that all of the time while I do the admin work.

When I was with the Winnipeg Symphony I was librarian for the first 11 years of their New Music Festival and here at the NAC we have a Young Composers Program each summer where 5 young composers come for an intensive training and workshop session on their piece. Part of my own personal mandate as an orchestra librarian has been to try and educate young composers about what constitutes a properly prepared part for a musician to play. Greg and I are very picky about what we will allow on our stage. With these young composers – who can’t afford professional copyists and therefore attempt to copy the parts themselves when they really don’t know proper preparation standards – I try to impress on them that a part that looks good, is easy to read, lies flat on the stand and has good page turns will be thought of more highly by the professional musician who has to learn it than something that looks like a bunch of chicken scratches held together by tape. It’s all about the presentation. If a composer wants the best performance of their piece, then he/she should at least give the musicians a fighting chance to play it. They have enough to concentrate on just learning the notes, without having to try to decipher them at the same time. These young composers’ parts undergo many changes from the time they first send me a sample until the time the ensemble players who are engaged to play for the workshops receive them. Hopefully all of this is appreciated, if not readily recognized by the players who never ever saw the first draft. Oy! Thank your librarian!