Librarians: In their own words

When you hear the word “librarian” what do you think of? I asked my 13 year old daughter that question and she said “a quiet person wearing glasses with her hair in a bun, and she has a name for her copier.”

I couldn’t help but laugh because panelist Marcia Farabee is the head librarian of the National Symphony Orchestra (I’m a cellist in the NSO), and Marcia is not quiet and she does not wear her hair in a bun. However, she does wear glasses and has been known to engage in name-calling sessions with the copier! Marcia is also the current president of the Major Orchestra Librarians Association (MOLA). She is an expert in many aspects of copyright law by virtue of the fact that she’s the person in our orchestra who has to deal with it most frequently.

We’re also happy to have Margo Hodgson join us on this panel. Margo is the head librarian for the National Arts Center Orchestra in Ottawa, Canada, and a former librarian of the Winnipeg Symphony, where she regularly consulted with composers as to how to make the parts they presented to the orchestra more “user-friendly.”

The librarian’s job in any orchestra is multi-faceted. Most musicians might only encounter their librarian when they borrow music to practice it before a rehearsal, or when they need something corrected or changed in their music. But that’s not the whole job. Here is part of a paragraph written by panelist Karen Schnackenberg, head librarian for the Dallas Symphony (and a past president of MOLA), discussing with me the reasons that an orchestra’s librarian needs a broad musical background, not just a librarian’s background: “…. cataloguing through the repertoire database (one has to know a lot about repertoire / composers / instrumentations), dealing with publishers and ordering music (one has to have a music history background and knowledge of editions, versions — think Mahler, Bruckner for ex.), budgets (again, one has to know a lot about music history, including publishing history of the composers, to determine what is in the public domain and what is protected under copyright, and also deal with a lot of instrumentation questions strictly for budgeting purposes), working with the artistic planning folks on repertoire (one has to know about the rep; we are constantly being asked if pieces or arrangements are “any good”), working with the conductors and string principals (one has to have intimate knowledge of the parts and of course complete musical abilities; we are making musical decisions all the time in the detail work of preparation)…”

Do orchestra librarians need special training? Panelist Jessica Slais, head librarian for the Omaha Symphony, discusses how and why she came to be a librarian. There isn’t an “audition” for a librarian’s position, but there is a definite career path which might appeal to more musicians if they were aware of it.

As our panel discussion continues we hope to also be joined by an artistic administrator (the staff person who works most closely with librarians), and a composer. As always, we invite our readers to comment (you must first register with Polyphonic by providing a username and password — no fee required) on what they read, and our panelists will respond to each other’s statements and to reader questions and comments.