Librarians: In their own words

Today is the last day with our panel of librarians. I’d like to thank each of them for joining us here at Polyphonic, and for being so articulate about the issues they face on the job.

During our communications with each other (via email) I realized there is another side to being a librarian which I think needs to be heard by those of us who benefit from their services … sometimes they are very annoyed with us! To close out our panel I’m including some of those annoyances, but like any writer, I’m withholding their identities to protect the innocent. The following “pet peeves” are in no particular order.

— Tape is my best friend when I’m preparing parts, but it’s really hard for people to understand why I ask them not to use it themselves. The various kinds of tape we keep on hand in the library (regular Scotch® tape, removable tape, VPC tape) are great tools when repairing, editing, or constructing parts. But musicians taping pages or excerpts onto parts is problematic, especially when the parts are rental materials and we could be fined for damage. Want to fix that page turn? Need to insert a section in B-flat instead of C? We [librarians] can do that in a way that not only preserves the original part but also works best for you.

–[a longterm player] has forever been marking parts in pen. I kindly asked him not to use ink anymore, and he replied that he has always done so because they are “his” parts and he would always perform works the same way. He also didn’t want the library to erase anything, and “no one had ever had a problem with this before”. I know he’s [not leaving any time soon], but I explained that someday someone new will be here and he may wish to [try a new] approach.

–[a certain player] cuts the margins off our music, rental music, pops artists’ music … [this person] doesn’t get real parts anymore.

— last night I saw something I had never seen before in a soloists’ back-stage ritual right before going out for the concerto, and it takes the prize for grossness! He lobbed a big spitball onto the floor at the door of the stage (right in front of me and my nice pants…), then stepped on it as if to rub it out, then took a giant step over it before walking out. We were all kind of in shock about that one.

–finding used kleenex, gum (I even had a player putting their used gum on the order sheets in the folder!) — and then there are the glasses, keys, even phones every now and then, left on the stands during stage moves or after concerts.

–[having to deal with] the conductor’s sweaty handerchief — The baton is handy in this case, using the tip to pick up the wet rag and plop it on top of the score, hopefully never touching it!

–it really bugs me when they cut the page for a page turn.

— 1) close your folders everytime you leave the stage because whenever there’s a stage move, we have to pick those up and change them, and stopping to close those that are still open doubles the time for this little exercise that gets repeated day after day; and 2) don’t mix your music between folders — we routinely have 4-6 folders going on at once. Mixing the music up and not putting the parts back into the folder from which it was taken can be a headache or worse at 8:00 PM on concert night. We don’t go through all the folders every single morning!

–stage changes can be quite the challenge because of open folders, wind players who leave bocals and/or reeds on the lip of their music stands, pencils and ear plugs on the stands, and brass mutes that [are not] put in the rack that is on their stand to hold them.

— [it’s] the week before a vacation, or the last week of the season, and players start coming up to me and asking, “will music be ready for after the holidays before we leave?” I want to say, “No, you’ll sight read at the first rehearsal” or “How long have you been playing in this orchestra? Have I ever let you down before?” [But I just] bite my tongue and merely answer “yes it will.”