arsclist Advice on designing a new music library

["Leandro Donozo" <donozo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone, and apologies for cross posting (I'm sending this message to
MLA-l, IAML-l and ARSClist).

I'm working on the project for a new Music Documentation and Research Centre
for the City Government of Buenos Aires. I'm not a trained music librarian,
since my education has been more as a research musicologist (though I've
been working for years on bibligraphy, libraries, journal and other music
documentation projects), but there are no music librarianship courses in
Argentina and very few music libraries. This means there are certain
technical basic thing for music librarians that I don't have any experience
with and maybe someone on the lists would care to give us a hand with.
We are now in the early stages of development of the project and we have to
decide on some things from where to build up our collection, and we could
really use some external advice, especially regarding some areas such as:

1-We would need some urgent advice on which is the most suitable software to
catalog books, journals, recordings, and concert programs. I would like to
have something compatible with other music libraries so we can be in contact
with the rest of the music library community.

2-Direct contact with anyone who has been involved with the organization of
similar projects more or less recently would be very helpfull. If there's
some bibliography to be recommended it would also be usefull.

3- Having government support for such a project in the middle of a profund
economic crisis as our country is undergoing is almost a miracle. But as you
can imagine, our budget is ver limited. We are going having to have funds to
buy some equipment (computers, scaneer, internet conection, etc) and pay for
some staff, but we will have nearly nothing available for adquistions for
the time being. Therefore, getting donations or gifts to add to local
productions is vital for us, so if anyone is having duplicates or is there
any program for this kind of situations we would like to know about it.

The centre is basically oriented to the musical activities from the city of
Buenos Aires, and is supposed to attend from the general public to students
and reseacrhers. As there are few music libraries in the city, most of them
with small collections, and this is going to be a public institutions we
will be serving a wide audience, and will have to try to collect as much as
possible on any music subject or area.
So, I think this a unique opportunity for us to create a useful musical
documentation centre here that could try to solve some eternal problems of
availability of bibliography, discography, journals and other sources for
research. It's obviously not the ideal situation, but is something that we
think it can be achieved if we act quickly and take this opportunity. I've
witnessed the open and collaborative spirit of people from the music library
community in the past, and really hope we can get some help with this
challenge.
So, any comments or suggestions, either public or privately will be
appreciated.
Best,

Leandro Donozo
donozo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx




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