The Librarian Job

[opus37]

So for one of the bands I play with, the librarian wants to quit. I'm contemplating taking it on. It is a small band, say 30 members and we play from a numbered book. Everyone keeps their book and a few extras are available. The main job is housing the parts and keeping the books up to date. This adds a few songs throughout the year. Week to week, there isn't much to do.

So, what kind of trouble am I taking on if I do it?

[Dan Schultz]

Sounds like a piece of cake compared to the job I do for my community band. I maintain 90 folders each containing about 100 tunes for use during the regular concert season. Those folders come out of circulation for 'deep maintenance' in October while we are using an equal number of Christmas folders.

I take care of the music for our eight-piece Dixieland ensemble. We also have a 10-15 piece group that does daytime events. There are several sets of folders for that group... circus music folder, patriotic folder, and Christmas folder.

It's a lot of work to do the initial setup but once everything is in motion it's fairly easy to maintain. I am also in the process of scanning about 2,000 concert band charts.

[Mark]

Your biggest problem may be getting the books back from people who leave the band.

[Dan Schultz]

Your biggest problem may be getting the books back from people who leave the band.

+1. I have two or three folders a year 'walk off'. That's a good argument for either using music that's still and print with more parts readily available or putting only copies in the folders.

At any rate... always maintain more than one folder in your possession so it can easily be 'cloned'.

[opus37]

Your biggest problem may be getting the books back from people who leave the band.

Funny you should say this. One of the big problems we have is trying to replace a missing conductor folder. It seems a number of years ago, a co-conductor "lost" the conductor folder and then quickly disappeared. We have been slowly collecting the music again, but some things are incredibly difficult to find. Now, all the books are copies of music with the originals in a file. Most of the originals are there. Some have walked away. I guess that is typical, with all the requests for single parts I see on this and other boards. When we borrow from someone, we always make copies for use because we are afraid of loosing the originals and not being able to return them. I thought about the idea of digitizing everything. That's a lot of work. I'm not sure what program to use to house the data for the most efficient retrieval. I'm liking the idea of making a back up copy of each book, but that is a lot of storage space. I haven't decided to take the job, but I'm thinking about it.

[Big Francis]

Is this your Two Harbors band? I think the biggest concern is the logistics of the location of you, the library, and the rehearsal/performance venue if something goes wrong.

Frank

[Rick F]

Band librarian can be a HUGE job. I've not been the librarian myself but in one band I played in, they paid the lady that did this job... not a lot but $1000 / year to help out.

[opus37]

Is this your Two Harbors band? I think the biggest concern is the logistics of the location of you, the library, and the rehearsal/performance venue if something goes wrong.

Frank

No, it is a band in St. Paul The Two Harbors Band Librarian is a paid job and is a lot of work. She puts away old music and adds new each week. I wouldn't touch that job for anything.

[MaryAnn]

The librarians I've seen who get the best results are of a certain personality....not at all afraid to stand up and make substantial threats when folders are passed out, that if you lose one or mess one up, you're going to be hunted down like a rabid dog and make to account for it. I'm not kidding. Those are the most effective librarians. Not to be messed with, basically. People will come to one rehearsal, take the folder home, and never be seen again. So they have to sign them out with name, address, phone number, name and location of first born.