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Assessing the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's score collection.

Article Excerpt
Seeking to develop a better understanding of the collections they managed, and beginning a process of long-term planning, music librarians at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) enlisted the assistance of the library's preservation administrator in assessing their collection's condition. This assessment gathered information about the collection's history and publication formats, circulation patterns, and preservation needs with the intent of generating a more complete picture of the collection's health. The data collected indicated directions the library should take to enhance the collection's management, and refuted long-held assumptions about the collection's preservation needs and the institution's ability to purchase replacement copies of damaged materials. The following article describes the project's planning and organization, reports on the assessment's findings, and proposes a series of recommendations to improve the cooperative preservation of our printed music collections.

COLLECTION HISTORY

The University of Illinois at Urbana--Champaign's printed music collections began as an integral part of the library's main collection. Housed in the Main Library's stacks until 1944, the library administration moved the 15,000-piece collection of scores and books to the second floor of the Smith Music Hall. Within twenty years, Smith Music Hall's inadequacy as a proper library became clear. The collection not only filled all of the available space in Smith Hall by the mid-1960s, but it resided within locked, wire-caged shelving that lined the building's non-air-conditioned hallways. In 1969, the library administration relocated the Music Library's listening services and circulating collections, excepting the scores, to the newly constructed Undergraduate Library. Nevertheless, this solution also proved unsatisfactory; the scores remained in an increasingly cramped Smith Hall, separated from the listening and general circulating collections. In August 1974, the university dedicated a new music building, consolidating the library's collections and the public services operations into a new, purpose-built library within the new building. At this time, the library administration relocated many of the valuable, older materials to secure, climate-controlled conditions in the Rare Books and Special Collections Library (RBSC). Those items not meeting RBSC's collection policies moved to a closed stack area within the new Music Library. Although this move did not represent a concerted effort to collocate all printed music materials published before a specific date, the identification and transfer of these items served to create a circulating collection consisting almost entirely of materials published after the early 1900s.

The musical scores received substantial support in terms of physical treatment when compared to other collections within the library. This resulted, in large measure, from the forward thinking of personnel within the Music Library itself. Nearly every score is either commercially bound or pamphlet bound, and personnel in the Music Library received training on basic collection maintenance treatments such as tipping in loose pages and mending torn leaves long before most individuals within the University Libraries were so trained.

Although the Music Library's staff actively participated in caring for the collection, there was no assessment of the collection's condition. The recently completed assessment project occurred, in part, because of the deteriorating condition of the older Dewey-classed materials. The most significant reason for doing so, however, was the appointment of the University Library's first full-time preservation administrator.

Although the University Library supported the continuous operation of a small mending unit from its inception as part of the Roosevelt administration's Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the centralized preservation program is relatively young when compared to those of similar institutions. Consolidated in 2001, the library's preservation program made great progress in its first three years of existence. Not only did it expand services throughout the University Library, but it supported the Music Library's long-standing interest in preservation through continued pamphlet binding; increased preventative binding of paperbacks, spiral-bound items, and other weak binding structures; and the implementation and rationalization of reactive treatments such as centralized repair services and brittle book reformatting. Despite this support, the first step in planning for the comprehensive care of any collection remains completing an assessment.

PLANNING AND CONDUCTING THE ASSESSMENT

Shortly after arriving at UIUC, the preservation administrator completed a successful assessment of the general library book stacks. (1) Working with the preservation administrator, the Music Library's staff sought to apply the same model to their collections. While the head of Preservation identified some resources for the treatment of materials within the Music Library, the absence of documentation about the collection's overall condition prevented systematic planning for its preservation. In addition to providing needed documentation for planning the expenditure of internal funds, the assessment would provide the library with data valuable for planning grants necessary to support the collection's ongoing treatment.

After several conversations about the music collection as a whole, the preservation administrator and the music librarians agreed on limiting the planned assessment to the library's circulating scores. Although the circulating scores received heavy use through the years, no comprehensive data existed about the collection's condition, use, and preservation needs, and little literature existed on this aspect of preservation planning within a music library. For this reason, the scores seemed the logical and appropriate place to begin assessing our collections. However, several other reasons influenced the decision.

The School of Music's faculty and students typically used the circulating scores as a performance collection; consequently, they received heavy circulation and much use-related wear and tear. Second, the recently completed assessment of the Main Library's stacks...

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