Notes (journal)

• 1. Introduction

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  Notes is a quarterly journal devoted to music librarianship, music bibliography and discography, the music trade, and certain aspects of music history. Its first editor, Eva Judd O'Meara, wrote in the very first issue with a note of dry humor: the notes were intended for a chorus of voices from all the music libraries in the group, but none had joined in, and one droned on alone, lamenting the other parts that were expected to give volume and tone to the performance. That was July 1934. A single person, mimeographing pages in a small run, was keeping alive what she hoped would become something larger. The questions worth asking are: how did a lone, mimeographed newsletter survive, grow, and eventually become the journal of record for an entire profession? Who carried it forward through the years? And what does a publication dedicated to music librarianship actually contain?

• 2. A Mimeographed Beginning

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  Those first 23 pages, produced in July 1934, included a practical article on organizing card catalogs to accommodate the many works from or about Johann Sebastian Bach. They also contained a humorous column called "Wrong Notes," which cataloged common errors made by music students. The humor was deliberate. O'Meara understood that a journal for librarians did not have to be dry, and that a publication held together by a single voice needed personality to survive. By May 1940, the journal had written its own constitution and doubled its membership. The solitary mimeographer was no longer alone. Libraries across the northeastern United States began taking turns producing issues: the Grosvenor Library in Buffalo, the Sibley Music Library at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, the New York Public Library, the Newberry Library in Chicago, and the Boston Public Library. Each institution lent its resources to print the next issue, a cooperative model that kept the first series alive for fifteen issues over eight years. The first series concluded in December 1942.

• 3. Reinvention in Print

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  In December 1943, one year after the first series closed, the Music Library Association issued the opening volume of a second series that continues to be published to this day. The shift was more than symbolic. That first issue in 1943 celebrated the move away from the long, unwieldy, seemingly less permanent mimeographed sheets of the first series toward typeset pages. Typeset production allowed for more space, both for articles and for advertisements, giving the journal the shape of a professional publication rather than an internal newsletter. Richard S. Hill became editor and held the position from 1943 to 1961, the longest editorial tenure in the journal's history. His years in the role covered the period when Notes established itself as the authoritative venue for music bibliography and librarianship scholarship. Donald William Krummel later wrote a sixty-year retrospective on the journal in 2004, tracing its arc from those first mimeographed sheets to a well-established quarterly.

• 4. What the Journal Covers

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  Published by the Music Library Association, Notes offers reviews of current music-related books, digital media, and sound recordings. Its scope is deliberately wide. Article subjects range from book reviews about modern musicians and groups such as Johnny Cash or Nine Inch Nails to classical composers including Bela Bartok or Chopin. In later years, the book review section was divided into named categories: Times, Places, Peoples; American Highways and Byways; Twentieth Century Musics; Late Romantics; and Composers. The journal also publishes inventories of publishers' catalogs and materials recently received, giving librarians a practical tool for collection development. Alongside those operational concerns, Notes continues to address issues specific to the field, including the challenges posed by digital media, scholarship in music bibliography, and bibliographies of musical and music-related works. The breadth reflects the range of problems a music librarian actually faces.

• 5. The Editors Who Shaped It

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  Eva Judd O'Meara, the founding editor, guided Notes from 1934 to 1940. Charles Warren Fox followed for 1941 and 1942, seeing the first series through to its end. After Hill's long tenure, a succession of editors each left a distinct mark on the journal's direction. Susan T. Sommer held the role from 1982 to 1987, followed by Michael Ochs from 1987 to 1992. Daniel Zager served from 1992 to 1997, then Richard Griscom from 1997 to 2000. Linda Solow Blotner edited from 2000 to 2004; James P. Cassaro from 2004 to 2010; Jane Gottlieb from 2010 to 2015; and Deborah Campana from 2015 to 2020. Jonathan Sauceda took over in 2020 and continues in the role. That list of names, spanning nearly nine decades, represents the sustained intellectual labor behind a publication that most people outside music librarianship have never encountered. Each editor inherited O'Meara's founding ambition: a chorus of voices, not a single drone.