Bibliography and Discography on Music for Solo Wind Instruments and Orchestra (review)

This set is a perfect example of the awkward and, one hopes transitional state in which reference publishing finds itself. For this is a database. It almost certainly was created as a database, and fine as it is in print, would be infinitely more flexible and useful if it were offered to the world in an online form. For instance, to use these books to gather information on all the wind concertos by a given composer, one must consult an index that gives only the number of concertos by a composer in each section of the set, and then flip to the individual sections to find the detailed information. Or, to find the works for a given combination of solo instruments, one must scan the "Two or More Solo Instruments" chapters, each of which is alphabetized by composer. One can readily imagine more complex queries that would be almost impossible using the print volumes, but quite simple in an online database.

But if an author wants remuneration for his work, he has to publish it. And if issues of academic promotion and tenure are involved (admittedly not an issue in the present case), publication must be in a peer-reviewed forum or issued by an established publisher of academic monographs. And publishers, like any other business, tend to want to do what they know they do well, which in this case means print information on paper and distribute it physically. Breitkopf and Härtel may well recognize that this bibliography would be extremely useful online. But commercial online publication means designing and maintaining a user interface, a place to host the data on the web, and the means to control access. Publication on the web also brings the expectation from users of some level of ongoing updating of the information. Selling the database on CD-ROM eliminates some of these concerns, but is still costly to do well, and the format is not a popular one with libraries. Many print publishers still find it much easier and economical to print a few thousand paper copies than to wrestle with the issues of online publication.

There is the option of self-publication on the web, but this has drawbacks as well. The same issues of web hosting and interface design faced by publishers can be even more daunting for individual authors. And then there is the loss of one of the primary benefits of commercial publication: promotion. Even without aggressive promotion, reference works published by established houses appear in publisher catalogs, on vendor slips sent to librarians, may be featured in advertisements in professional journals, and are submitted for reviews in journals such as Notes. It is difficult for a self-published Web site, however well conceived, to become widely known to reference librarians without this promotional support.

Music librarians should encourage publishers to think creatively when presented with reference works such as the set currently under review, to find ways to work with other publishers, online service providers, or academic partners to make such works available in the format(s) that will be most appropriate for their users, rather than most convenient for the producers. In addition, the Music Library Association (MLA) should help to promote useful, authoritative self-published Web sites, either by adding more Web reviews to Notes, or possibly creating an e-mail or RSS review source along the lines of the National Science Foundation's Scout Report, and aggressively seeking sites and inviting submissions for review, as we do with commercially published works. It is in the interest of those we serve to do so.

To return to the work at hand: Hermann Haug is not a professional musician, but a retired research scientist with a love of wind concertos. He has endeavored to compile listings of all works for solo winds and orchestra, string orchestra or chamber orchestra which he could identify from other published bibliographies, music-in...