Directions in Music Cataloging (review)

The Music Library Association Technical Reports Series, despite its rather dry title, has encompassed a broad range of titles, from those intended as practical manuals, to those describing the state of the art in various areas of music librarianship, and even to a few of a more philosophical nature. The present volume fits comfortably into the latter two categories, and is the first in the Festschrift format (though it is not explicitly identified as such). In fact, MLA has issued only a handful of such honorary publications, and this is the first to honor a music librarian celebrated for contributions to technical services. As such, and as a broad-ranging—if somewhat brief—monograph on current issues in music cataloging, its appearance is long overdue.

The dearth of recent literature of a similar nature notwithstanding, the timing of publication of this compilation is opportune and its impetus is extremely fitting: the passing of beloved music cataloger Arsen Ralph Papakhian (1948-2010), formerly of the William and Gayle Cook Music Library at Indiana University Bloomington. As a leader of the profession and mentor to an entire generation of music catalogers, Papakhian at once engendered respect for authority, practicality, and tradition, and encouraged skepticism, innovation, and bold questioning of assumptions. The latter, as observed by H. Stephen Wright, who furnishes the introduction to the volume, can be encapsulated by Papakhian's frequent monosyllabic utterance: "Why?" Indeed, this simple query serves as a sort of mantra that many of the authors of the volume invoke.

As befitting a Festschrift, all contributors were close colleagues or former mentees of the late Papakhian. (In the interest of full disclosure, I wish to identify myself as yet another former student, and his penultimate cataloging intern at IU in 2008.) Due to Papakhian's long career, the authors span multiple generations. IU colleague Sue Stancu, who writes the closing commemoration, worked with him from 1979 until his untimely death. Conversely, Michelle Hahn and Damian and Beth Iseminger entered Papakhian's orbit only within the last decade. Within this time span, there are, no doubt, countless others who could offer complementary insights.

Still, the editors have crafted, from this ample pool of possible contributors, a fine cross-section of diverse insights. The book's nine main chapters are divided into three parts: "The Foundations of Music Cataloging Today," "Cataloging Theory in Transition," and "Current and Emerging Standards of Practice." This tripartite division of three chapters each forms a loose chronological axis along which the reader may contextualize Papakhian's own contributions to music cataloging. However, perhaps a better method for evaluating the content in total is by examining the function of each respective chapter and its authors' intent. Thus, for the purposes of this review, the nine contributions are divided into the following categories: historical treatments, reports of the results of research or experimentation, description of current cataloging practice, and essays of a philosophical or speculative nature.

In the category of historical treatments are two brief yet dense chapters. Jay Weitz offers a concise chronicle of the Music OCLC Users Group, the organization arguably most closely tied to Papakhian's career and legacy. The group began life as a task force to aid OCLC in implementing the new Machine Readable Cataloging (MARC) music format, and has evolved over its thirty-plus year lifetime into a vital professional organization that provides support to an international community of music librarians. Weitz's chronology spares no detail, naming all past officers (including their affiliations), annual meeting locations, and specific projects undertaken. Such depth of treatment not only lends the chapter fundamental value to MOUG's institutional memory, it also provides a most edifying read for anyone who has been closely involved with the organization.

Beth Iseminger contributes an equally detailed history of a group with a much shorter yet no less rich history. The Genre/Form Task Force of the MLA...