PI: David Day

Evaluation of Academic Objectives

The grant funding enabled preparation of conference presentations by three BYU students given at the joint meeting of the International Association of Music Libraries and International Musicological Society held in New York City June 21st through 26th, 2015. The three students, Benjamin Bird, Andrew Neumayer, and Rosemary Norton were identified in advance and all three stayed with the project to its successful completion. Each student paper related to their work on an index hosted by the Harold B. Lee Library called Opera and Ballet Primary Sources (OBPS). This index provides convenient searching and linked access for more than 24,000 opera and ballet scores and librettos available for free online (https://atom.lib.byu.edu/obps/). The specific anticipated outcomes included (1) the students’ presentations, (2) intellectual development through the preparation of each student’s presentation that extends beyond the normal classroom experience, and (3) expanding each student’s perspective of the relationship between music scholarship and music cultural heritage. I believe that all of these objectives were successfully achieved.

Evaluation of the Mentoring Environment

The mentoring environment for the project was ideal and helped ensure the successful completion of our objectives. The students were already working with me on the OBPS project prior to the conference. The student workstations are located immediately adjacent to my office. It was a convenient arrangement where the students could come to me frequently with any questions that arose during their preparations. We also held weekly meetings as a group to monitor the progress of each student’s work. While attending the conference, I made it a point to introduce the students to my professional colleagues and met with them throughout the conference to explain the nature of the organizations and how the conferences are conducted.

Academic Deliverables of Each Student

At the conference, each of the three students presented formal papers. Andrew Neumayer spoke in a session devoted to opera research. His paper was titled “Opera Research in the Virtual Reading Room.” His presentation highlighted the growing number of digital resources online that help facilitate research in opera. He focused on resources for 17thcentury opera published by the Ballard family and BYU’s own collection of early 19th 2 century Italian opera manuscripts. Unfortunately, the Chair of the session did not introduce Andrew. As a result, he made a brief introduction of his own and mentioned that he was an undergraduate student. After his paper, Linda Fairtile, the head of the American Institute for Verdi Studies told him is paper was excellent and she would not have imagined he was an undergraduate if he had not said so. Andrews’s paper helped shed some positive light on our OBPS database. After his paper, the President of RISM (a major international database devoted to identifying holdings of early music in libraries throughout the world) commented on the value of OBPS and made a request that we collaborate with RISM.

Rose Norton spoke at a session devoted to legacy collections. Here paper titled “Gallica and Music Research” discussed ways to deal with the inconsistencies in Gallica’s metadata. In other words, the cataloging information in Gallica has many inconsistencies that make it difficult to search by genres, including opera and ballet. Her paper was well rehearsed and presented. Afterwards, the main person responsible for music materials in Gallica confirmed that the search strategies Rose suggested were in fact the same strategies the staff of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF) use when trying to organize and clean up their own metadata.

Ben Bird presented the third paper during a session devoted to the Semantic Web. His paper was titled “OBPS Unveiled: An Index to Opera and Ballet Primary Sources Online and the Research It Enables.” This session was one of the most heavily attended of the conference. All of those working on the cutting edge of this kind of research were present. His presentation (and our database) was well received among this critical group. One of the leading authorities in digital musicology told me he was amazed at the painstaking work that has gone into the database. Ben was introduced as a professional with background as an opera singer. Everyone in the audience assumed he was a professional librarian. I am quite certain that very few had any idea he is an undergraduate student. After the paper, the presenter who preceded Ben approached us and asked he could have a copy of our OBPS name authority file for his own research related to linked data for biographies of composers.

At the end of Ben’s paper two representatives from the BNF approached me. They indicated that they want to partner with us on OBPS and indicated they can provided us a data file that will help make it easier to include all of their offerings in OBPS. This is an enormous step forward that may help us grow the database by more than 10,000 items (especially librettos). Later in the summer we received a preliminary file that helped facilitate indexing of all the BNF scores in Gallica.

All three students had a very positive experience at the conference and learned some of the ins and outs of networking in a professional environment. I believe they came away from the conference with a greater appreciation of how music scholarship helps preserve and promote our cultural heritage. They also took full advantage of the opportunities in New York City during their free time.

Results and Findings of the Project

The primary objectives of enriching each student’s educational experience were successfully achieved as described above. In addition to these gains, BYU also benefitted from the favorable impressions created by our students at this international gathering. In the course of preparations for the conference, the OBPS database also benefited from additional data entry and improvements gained by the students’ insights and the comments they received after their presentations.

Budget Expenditures

Budgeted funds were expended close to the original budget targets. The cost of lodging was about $700 higher than anticipated, but we saved enough on airfare and ground transportation to bring the total overruns to about $304. I was able to make up the difference by supplementing the student wages from other research funding.

The students had not expended the entire $9000.00 for wages by the end of the conference in June. I decided to run out the wages budget by allowing the students to continue working on the OBPS database through October 2015.

Summary of actual expenses

Student Wages: ……………………………………………………………………………………….$9,000.00
Combined airfares: …………………………………………………………………………………..$2,103.22
Dormitory fees for Andrew and Ben: ………………………………………………………….$1,200.00
Hotel costs for Andrew and Ben
(for the first night when the dorm was not available): ………………………………………$384.58
Hotel costs for Rose: …………………………………………………………………………………$1,920.75
Hotel costs for David Day: ………………………………………………………………………..$1,391.86
Meal per diem for four persons: ………………………………………………………………….$1,792.00
Personal Vehicle: ………………………………………………………………………………………….$63.25
Airport Parking ………………………………………………………………………………………………52.35
Taxis in NYC ……………………………………………………………………………………………..$188.36
TOTAL EXPENDITURES: …………………………………………………………………..$18,096.37
Allocated Budget ……………………………………………………………………………………$17,792.00
Over run paid from other research funds …………………………………………………..$304.37