First posting

Well, its been a while since I began this internship, and I've been working hard with some good results so far. After discussing with Michael Fling, retired collection development librarian at Indiana University, about a topic for this collection development internship, he recommended Jazz because the collection could be stronger in this area, and he admitted having less knowledge about this subject than music in the Western classical tradition. I told him it sounded like a lot of fun, despite the fact that I myself knew very little about Jazz. He said that sometimes, collecting on a subject for which you are not familiar can be a better exercise than for something about which that you already know a lot. Thus began my epic journey into the heart of the Jazz world...

I knew early on that most of my attentions would be focused on recordings, and I figured it would be a good idea to try and familiarize myself with artists and their recordings through three avenues:

1. Jazz history books and encyclopedias, who can both identify major and minor figures in Jazz and place them in historical and stylistic context;
2. Jazz periodicals, which publish numerous reviews of both print and and audio materials on Jazz, particularly important for contemporary Jazz music and performers;
3. Vendors of Jazz recordings, sheet music, books, etc., who often compile lists of important recordings. Michael recommended www.ejazzlines.com as a resource for finding extensive Jazz materials.

I first took a trip to the music library to check out a huge stack of Jazz history books. I have begun reading a few of them, going one Jazz period at a time to familiarize myself with the performers and styles of that period, all the while compiling a list of recommended recordings to look for from vendors.

I also compiled a list of Jazz periodicals to which the library subscribes, or for which reviews exist online for free. These will be a good source for learning about new recordings. Many of these magazines and journals publish "Best of" lists and editor's picks, with archives that go back six or seven years.

Ejazzlines.com has prepared some levelled core collections lists of recordings and videos for library collections. I've most recently been searching through the core collection lists, comparing the recordings against the IU libraries' holdings. This is more complicated than it may seem for Jazz, because recordings get rereleased over and over again, sometimes with different titles for the same audio material. This can be quite the painstaking process. I've decided that if we own a copy of the recordings on LP, I would not try and replace it with a CD version, but that if recordings only existed on 78 rpm discs, I would replace them. This decision was made after concluding that the Variations 2 project at IU would be capable of digitizing LPs without loss of sound quality, but the limitations of the 78 rpm format would produce inferior copies, which could be corrected by acquiring a CD copy. In most cases, the items I have selected so far are for works not yet represented in the library collections as opposed to replacements for recordings that exist only on 78s.

At this point in time, I've spent about 30 hours on my internship thus far. I plan on exhausting the selection resources of ejazzlines.com, then move on to different sources of recommended recordings in journals, magazines, library journals, other online Jazz information and product sources, etc. All the while, I plan on continuing my study of Jazz history, reading and listening as much as possible as I go. Finally, I've selected a few articles and books on collection development that I hope to have reviews for in the near future. Voilà.