Re: [ARSCLIST] cataloging sound recordings

[Matt Snyder <msnyder@xxxxxxxx>]

Karl Miller <lyaa071@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>For ten points, where can one find some recordings of music of piano
>improvisations by Schillinger? The route to that information is not an
>easy one...hint...try the Library of the Performing Arts. (New York
>Public)

Actually, it is a fairly easy route; RLIN may not have worked for your
inquiry about Koussevitsky conducting Copland's Third Symphony, but it
worked for this. RLIN's record for the Schillinger collection at the
Rodgers & Hammerstein archive of the Library for the Performing Arts,
which mentions the piano improvisations, had a direct link to the online
finding aid (as did the catalog record at NYPL).  Whether you consider
that "easy" depends on how difficult it is for you to get access to RLIN,
I would guess.

Unfortunately the route is not so easy for the plethora of worldwide
archival collections that not only don't have catalog records on RLIN or
anywhere else, but don't even have complete finding aids, either paper or
electronic,  because the archivists don't have the funding or time to do
it. The issue of intellectual access to unique archival holdings, which
are generally described in groups of items, is a rather different issue
than that of access to the individually cataloged items of libraries.

Matt Snyder
Music Archivist
Wilson Processing Project
The New York Public Library