What does "information literacy" mean in a music environment?

16 - 18 June, 2008 librarians working in higher music education institutions met in Reykjavik. Our colleagues at Iceland Academy of the Arts, with the library director Lisa Valdimarsdóttir as head of the organizing committee, had prepared a fantastic programme for us. One session was devoted to discussions around the Bologna process. We were divided into groups - each group received one specific question. We had only about half an hour for the group discussion before we met and presented summaries for eachother! I was actually quite impressed that so much came out of this!

With kind permission I post the summary of group one below. Tone Elofsson, head librarian of The Norwegian Academy of Music, made the outline:

Group no. 1

What does “information literacy” mean in a music environment?

First of all teaching information literacy at a higher music education institution is not limited to
text. Both printed music and sound recordings must be included. One of the tasks will be to make the students aware of the importance of different editions of printed music, point out the difference between Urtext editions and later editions and also give access to digitized manuscripts when possible. Showing the need of listening to many recordings of the same composition – get to know about the change of style, different interpretations, versions played on original instruments etc. Today it is also expected that musicians should be able to communicate about the music they perform, and often they even have to write program notes. Here the library could contribute through teaching the students how to search and find suitable texts from printed sources and databases.

Tone Elofsson

Dear Colleagues,

Sorry for not keeping in touch! The reason is a rather hectic schedule - I'm sure you are all familiar with this!

Some of you attended the second session with LIMTI in Naples. As you might remember I asked you to participate in a discussion during the year about the Bologna process. This was one of the reasons why I created this blog. The idea was that the discussion will be followed up in Amsterdam next year. I announced that I would post several questions as "food for discussion". Here comes number one - I look forward to your response!

1. What does “information literacy” mean in a music environment?


Pia Shekhter

Farewell to ELIA!

Late Friday afternoon there was a closing plenary with "observers" from outside reflecting on the content of each symposium. I think this was a very good idea, but I was quite tired and had some problems to concentrate. I was not the only one... The plenary session ended with a composition/happening by Staffan Mossenmark, Academy of Music and Drama, Gothenburg, in which we all took part - chewing hard bread, making sounds with balloons etc. The evening ended with a reception offered by the City of Gothenburg and, for people who could still stand up, a continuation "in the tradition of Pecha-Kucha".

Unfortunately I was not able to take part in the conference on Saturday. That meant that I missed the ELIA General Assembly, some so called fringe sessions and the final party.

I found the conference very stimulating and had an idea that it would be interesting to invite speakers from ELIA and AEC to a coming session with Libraries in Music Teaching Institutions. We are, so to speak, in the same boat. What do you think?

~Pia~

Talkin' loud and sayin' something

During the conference there were five parallell symposia running. I attended the one called "Talkin' loud and sayin' something" about artistic research. The symposium took place in Göteborg Museum of Art and had four photographic exhibitions and video installations as a starting point. Each artist made a presentation of her (all artists were female) work, which was commented by a panel and followed by questions from the audience. The discussion was not about the artistic "end product", but the process leading up to it - could it qualify as "research"? Could the art product be seen as an answer to the research question? Could the theory be visualized? The debate was quite intense. The artists themselves meant that their Ph. D. studies had opened up their minds to explore new methods and approaches while many people in the audience were quite sceptical. There seemed, however, to be a consensus that we need new books in art history and new art critics with this perspective in mind. Everybody also seemed to agree that it was important to make a distinction between "practice based research" and "research based practice"! I must admit that I felt just as confused at the end of the symposium as in the beginning - but maybe on a higher level;-)?

~Pia~