Home | Access to Music (Summary)
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SCOPE

The issues dealt with in this guideline include: 
Legislation and guidelines relating to music libraries
Music copyright
Relationship with the commercial world
Co-operative acquisition
Music and the Internet
Special services
Staff and training
Search and retrieval

POLICY ISSUES

The European Union Harmonica project did much to document major issues affecting music in libraries in across Europe. A current EU project to help music libraries (and others) to exploit the potential of the digital environment is the MUSICNETWORK (http://www.interactivemusicnetwork.org/).

The personal consumption of music and film via its various physical carriers and increasingly through the Internet is now a major ingredient in the daily life, leisure and education of most Europeans. Public libraries provide an important component of this provision. Some 5% of the holdings of Europe’s public libraries (over 60 million items) consist of ‘audio-visual materials’, mainly recordings of music and film held on CD, DVD, videocassette etc. Digital file formats, protocols and networks, e.g. Internet downloading and streaming platforms, P2P (peer-to-peer) file exchange and emerging mobile and wireless distribution have caused commercial music producers and distributors to change their processes. The increasing ease of downloading music has made "fighting the free" (Jupiter Research) a major issue for commercial producers and distributors. However it is clear that simply branding all freely accessible music as illegal does not meet the requirements of public libraries. Public music libraries and archives have an important role to play in finding a fair balance for all those involved in music, as producers or consumers, especially with regard to accessibility, social and digital inclusion, education and cultural diversity issues. 

Legislation and guidelines. From the 1990s onwards the legal and technical frameworks for distributing and accessing cultural artefacts in the digital environment are being re-adjusted (cf. the European Directive on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the Information Society, 2001/29/EG). However, the EU harmonisation process has not been finished in time (December 2002), and still major discussions are going on, e.g. about the new legal protection for "technical measures" (Digital Rights Management/DRM) and about whether "private copies" will be allowed or not. Music is the area most affected by the related legal and technical changes, as shown by the amount of music-related copyright lobbying and litigation (MP3.com, Napster).

Only one European country (Denmark) specifies music explicitly in any form in government legislation on public libraries. There are enormous variations in the levels of music stock and services: for example, there are few music libraries in Greece, whereas it is the norm to find a music department in the public libraries of most Scandinavian towns - or even a separate music library. 

Guidelines on music provision exist in some countries at regional or local level but such provision is at the discretion of the local authority. In France, for example, while free provision and access to national and regional culture in libraries are determined by government statute, concrete progress towards this aim has yet to be translated fully into practice in many towns and regions.

Many music departments in public libraries hold printed music in the form of books linked to recordings, composers, performers, shows, styles etc. Somewhat less frequently, they also carry vocal and instrumental scores in sets. Elsewhere there has been movement towards the idea of a phonoteque or mediathèque where the emphasis is on recorded and multimedia materials and where little or no printed music may be available. The diverse media formats (scores, audio recordings, videos, books, etc) are rarely integrated, not even in catalogues

National or regional planning for music provision by public libraries has taken root only gradually in a few countries. Where this is the case, as in the United Kingdom, benefits are already tangible. Some countries have sophisticated arrangements for resource sharing while others do not, and the inter-lending of recorded materials is still in its infancy, despite the more robust nature of compact discs and other modern sound and video carriers. Cooperation and consortium agreements are likewise very variable, particularly at cross-sectoral or cross-domain levels.

Related resources:
Fred Friend, "Resource Sharing Between UK Academic Libraries", Local Access to Global Collections, A Joint RLG-CURL Symposium on International Resource Sharing, University College London, 23, Sept, 1996. http://www.rlg.org/globfred.html
Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals Forum for Interlending link page:
http://www.cilip.org.uk/groups/fil/linksf.html

Funding for music library services has in general declined considerably over the last decade in favour of other areas of local authority expenditure or other library services or investment in technology. In some countries, a perception that classical music services are only for “an elite” has also contributed to this process. 

The growth in the development of audio-visual collections has given rise to the hope that they may become self-financing especially by charging for the loan of recordings. In Central and Eastern Europe, where economies are in transition, funding has simply not been available at the levels which were provided in the past. In other countries, such as Finland, all services, including music and non-print materials, are supplied free of charge.

Training for music librarians remains limited with only a few good examples of innovation and development. The existence of an international professional association (International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres) is almost universally acknowledged as important at both international and national levels, serving as a focus for cooperation and for professional development. Additionally, cross-sectoral co-operation between various music-related libraries, archives, and museums and their associations are about to emerge (FIAT, IAMIC, IFLA, EBU, IASA etc.; see MUSICNETWORK Working Group Music Libraries, http://www.interactivemusicnetwork.org/.

Standards for music and non-print stock, Internet services, staff and cataloguing are clearly stated in some countries while in others no standards at all exist. The complexity of music, with its range of different formats and languages, countless arrangements of the same work or parts of a work, and its international scope, means that adherence to standards is particularly important if data exchange is to take place. The immediate future lies in greater co-operation in existing standards, and wider sharing of the work of data creation.

Social Inclusion: services for ethnic minority communities and for users with disabilities are diverse, where they exist at all, with some surprising gaps in provision in countries where minority populations are relatively large. Access and assistance for those with disabilities seem only to be considered in those countries which have legislation relating to discrimination. See also social inclusion 

Digital technologies: the recording of music and film has long since moved from analogue to digital and the technology is now available in domestic equipment. Digital technology and the Internet are providing new means of distribution. Music files are readily downloadable in MP3 format. Following the NAPSTER case, major producers may start to distribute in this or similar formats themselves, although Internet security and e-commerce models remain major issues. Once these problems are resolved and sufficient bandwidth is widely available, direct purchase over the Internet from distributors and/or producers is likely to become widespread. 

Copyright. There are few agreements on copyright interpretation between libraries and producers. The increased accessibility of music material on the Internet makes it of the utmost importance than music libraries develop a set of guidelines to allow their readers to access those without violating intellectual property rights, in the context of new European and global copyright legislation. See also copyright

Relationships with the commercial world: the role of public libraries differs from the supply patterns of the market. The music holdings of most public libraries do not reflect the balance of sales in the commercial world. The public library audience tends to be older than that of the record store and to favour 'classical' and special interest music over 'pop' music in comparison with the pattern of commercial sales.

It has been argued that some people use the stock of the public library as a way of sampling the market before making purchases. This argument is met with some scepticism by the record industry - some of whom see the public library as a provider of materials for illegal copying. Public Libraries usually only purchase a selection of new releases and keep stock for a much longer time (that is, for as long as it is still borrowed) than record stores. 

Relationships between libraries and producers/publishers and retailers are important also in areas like cataloguing. As shown by the (former) CIP agreement (Catalogue in Publishing), common classification schemes are useful in library information retrieval as well as in commerce. In the area of music libraries, the developments in commercial music classification (e.g., Phononet in the German-speaking countries etc.) should not be neglected. Awareness of the digital music distribution strategies and platforms of producers/publishers and retailers (e.g. Amazon.com/Echo, Virgin etc.) will help the development of digital music platforms in libraries.

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