Music Libraries Online ‐ a virtual union catalogue for music
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb040710 |
| Pages | 43-49 |
| Date | 01 January 1999 |
| Published date | 01 January 1999 |
| Author | Katharine Hogg |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
Music Libraries Online
- a virtual union
catalogue for music
by Katharine Hogg, Music Libraries
Consultant, Music Libraries Online,
Trinity College of Music
Music Libraries Online is an eLib project to
create a virtual union catalogue for music in
the
UK,
based on the nine conservatoire
libraries, using the Z39.50 protocol for
information retrieval.
The
project has
particularly tackled issues of
common
bibliographical standards which have a
significant impact on the quality of results.
The Music Libraries Online project was founded
to create a virtual union catalogue for music on the
World Wide Web, enabling Web access to the
holdings of all the libraries in the consortium with
a single search. The project is funded for three
years by the UK higher education funding body as
part of its Joint Information Systems Committee
(JISC) Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib)
Phase
3
which, in early 1997, invited bids from
consortia to use and evaluate the Z39.50 retrieval
protocol for large-scale resource discovery. In
practice this has led to the establishment of several
virtual union catalogues. The Music Libraries
Online (MLO) consortium was the only subject-
based consortium to be successful in its bid for
funds,
together with three geographically-based
consortia in the UK; the four projects, known
informally as the "clumps" projects as they repre-
sent '"clumps" of
resources,
are now working
closely to share technical and management infor-
mation and to disseminate results1.
The Z39.50 protocol defines a standard way for
two computers to communicate for the purpose of
information retrieval, providing a consistent view
of information from a wide variety of sources so
that databases from different library systems can
be included in the same search. Library users will
enter search terms on a Web-based interface and a
search request will be submitted to the central
clump server. Software on this server will perform
a search on all (or selected) databases from the
consortium, and create a result set which will be
returned to the user interface as a single set of
results, indicating the different locations of items
found.
Consortium members
The MLO consortium comprises the nine
conservatoires in the UK:
Birmingham Conservatoire
Guildhall School of Music and Drama
Leeds College of Music
Royal Academy of Music
Royal College of Music
Royal Northern College of Music
Royal Scottish Academy of Music and
Drama
Trinity College of Music
Welsh College of Music and Drama
These nine form the primary partners in the
project, and secondary partners are to be drawn
from other sectors, including public libraries,
university music libraries, national libraries and
composer archives. Secondary partners which plan
to
join within the funded period include the univer-
sities of London (Senate House library),
Birmingham, Oxford (Music Faculty library) and
Huddersfield, and from the public library sector
Westminster City Libraries (which includes the
Central Music Library in Westminster, a major
music collection) and Birmingham City Libraries.
The project is also in discussion with the British
Music Information Centre, which holds an exten-
sive collection of contemporary and unpublished
British music, and the British Library Document
Supply Centre, two institutions which have ex-
pressed an interest
in
joining the project.
Project management
The project steering group, led by Kate Sloss,
chief librarian of Trinity College of
Music,
man-
ages the project. The group includes senior
librarians from the nine music conservatoires and
representatives from the Performing Arts Data
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