Big News from Sibley Music Library

[jfarrington]

Sibley Music Library of the Eastman School of Music has received a National Endowment for the Humanities Preservation and Access Award of $273,820 in support of the Library's efforts to digitize music scores in the public domain. The principal goal of the project is to provide free online access to approximately 10,000-12,000 public domain scores, from the Library's general collections, held by not more than two other libraries in the world. Over the course of the two-year project (2009-2011), Sibley Music Library will digitize these materials and make them freely available from the University of Rochester's Digital Repository "UR Research"
(http://urresearch.rochester.edu). The Library has been engaged in digitizing public domain scores for the past four years-on a demand basis by Eastman School of Music faculty and students, as well as professional and amateur musicians around the world. To date, Sibley Music Library has digitized over 4,000 items (many of which have found their way into IMSLP), which have accounted for more than two million downloads from UR Research. The NEH award supports the hiring of two additional staff members, thus permitting the Library to accelerate the pace of its digitization program and thereby provide access to a significant portion of its pre-1923 scores holdings.
Co-administrators of the project are Sibley Music Library staff members Alice Carli, Conservator, and Jim Farrington, Head of Public Services.
Sibley Music Library is the largest academic music library in North America, with total holdings of some 750,000 items. Founded in 1904 by Hiram Watson Sibley (1845-1932) as a public music library for the Rochester, NY community, the library became part of the Eastman School of Music at the School's founding in 1921 as a constituent part of the University of Rochester. During the course of its first century the Library amassed large and noteworthy holdings of rare books as well as strong collections of circulating music scores, recordings, books, and journals. Sibley Music Library's public domain scores digitization program focuses on items drawn from its circulating collection of scores. Given the date of the Library's founding, Sibley is particularly rich in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century (i.e., public domain) scores, including solo, chamber, orchestral, vocal, and operatic music.

[pml]

Marvellous news Jim, and congratulations.

Regards, Philip

[Carolus]

Three cheers, and congratulations!

[daphnis]

Jim, that's absolutely fantastic. Best wishes and congratulations on this achievement.

[carmar1791]

Congratulations!.. And .......... good work!

Ciao

Carmar

[Generoso]

This is great! I think we have started an avalanche.

This is wonderful for all musicians (and music lovers) in the world!

[horndude77]

Congratulations! Thanks for letting us know here. Beyond the new staff are there plans to acquire a faster scanner? I remember an old post here where you mentioned that you were using flat-bed scanners.

[Peter]

I don't know how much a scanning robot like BSB's cost, but I assume it could easily do more work than a person servicing a flatbed scanner!

[jfarrington]

We try not to use the flatbed scanners we have for the time reason you mention. We'll be buying the latest generation of the Fujitsu sheetfeed scanner that we have been using. It's a bit faster than the one we use now, I believe.

Jim

Congratulations! Thanks for letting us know here. Beyond the new staff are there plans to acquire a faster scanner? I remember an old post here where you mentioned that you were using flat-bed scanners.

[aldona]

Congratulations - this is great news! I'm looking forward to seeing more of the wonderful material in the Sibley library.

Already, every day for me begins with the ritual of checking IMSLP, UR Research and the Danish Royal Library website for new stuff while my blood caffeine level reaches equilibrium. Combing through the UR Research/Sibley site is always like being a child lost in a candy warehouse.

Aldona
(late in commenting by a few days - recovering from a bad flu/virus)