
Australian IAML representatives
(right) Laurel Dingle (President) and (left) Georgina Binns welcoming delegates
Photo courtesy Michael Fingerhut
The Sydney Conservatorium of Music
Photo courtesy Michael Fingerhut
(Left) Dick Letts; (right) Professor Malcolm Gillies, keynote speaker
Photo courtesy Michael Fingerhut
Robyn Holmes (left) with Delmae Barton and Peter Sculthorpe
Photo courtesy Michael Fingerhut

Chair of the Australian
organising committee, Carolyn Symes, recently retired from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music
Photo courtesy Michael Fingerhut
Musical performances included William Barton (centre) and the Greenway
String Quartet
Photo courtesy Michael Fingerhut
Music Librarians in the Antipodes!
For the first time ever the annual conference of the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres (IAML) was held in Australia in the first week of July. IAML, a member organisation of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), encourages and promotes the activities of music libraries, archives and documentation centres. It aims to support and facilitate the realisation of projects in music bibliography, music documentation and music library and information science at national and international levels.
In an atmosphere of excitement and goodwill, there were over 220 delegates—more than half from Europe, the USA, Asia, the Pacific nations and Africa—who gathered in the beautifully restored Sydney Conservatorium of Music, once the governor’s stables but now furnished with new ultra-modern music studios and theatres. The wonderful venue provided a welcome backdrop to what was to be a non-stop whirl of presentations, business meetings, musical events, exhibits and coffee corner conversations about music and libraries.
With the annual meeting usually being held in Europe, the Sydney location enabled many Australian librarians to attend for the first time. Colleagues working in specialised fields and across widely varying organisations came together to share knowledge and experience, get inspiration and support, network, and negotiate new projects, collaborations and products. There was something for everyone: papers on new digitisation and online projects, new cataloguing standards and procedures, the dating of music, and expositions of new collections and resources. There were sessions presented by public librarians, broadcasting and orchestral librarians, archivists, university librarians, copyright specialists, iconographers, musicologists and writers, plus several working groups, including a forum with four inspirational young library professionals.
The buzz of ideas, chatter and activity began with an inviting reception at the State Library of New South Wales and ended with delegates dancing the night away to Australian and Australian–Italian folk-dance tunes at a jovial closing dinner overlooking the harbour—looking towards the 2008 conference in Naples! The live musical performances, always a special feature of music library conferences, carried the theme of tradition and innovation as they explored new Australian musical composition within Indigenous and Asian regional contexts, including some works commissioned by IAML Australia for the occasion.
The opening sessions of the conference raised the tone and profile of music librarianship from the very outset. It was special to witness the appreciation of music librarianship by one of our most significant Australian composers, Peter Sculthorpe, who accepted the role of Patron of IAML Australia and whose personal archives are held in the National Library. The conference was also fortunate to have presentations by three international Presidents, two of whom are Australians—the President of IFLA, Alex Byrne, and the President of the International Music Council, Dick Letts—as well as the keynote speaker, Professor Malcolm Gillies, previously at The Australian National University and now Vice-Chancellor of the City University, London. In his keynote address, ‘From Pencil to Podcast: Maximising Musical Resources’, Professor Gillies reflected on his three decades of using music libraries and archives and tackled key questions and challenges confronting music librarianship in the digital age. These challenges were to imbue the conference with a sense of urgency about the state of the profession and an ongoing demand for the specialist expertise of music librarians to be nurtured and valued within changing library contexts.
Members of IAML Australia had formed a local organising committee that worked together with the international body’s executive and chairs of various commissions, committees and working groups to develop the program and manage all the organisation. Since the conference, this small band of Australian music librarians has received generous compliments from our international visitors for the ‘truly wonderful atmosphere’ we created: ‘friendly, efficient, and magnificently organised’. In addition, international guests have consistently expressed their delight in discovering the fascinating complexity of Australian musical culture and history, the rich variety of our collections, and our innovative and ambitious collaborative approaches to online services.
The Australian committee wishes to thank all the libraries, publishers and organisations that supported the conference and enabled staff to participate, and in particular the University of Sydney libraries, the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, the State Library of NSW, the Australian Music Centre, the Music Council of Australia, Prue Neidorf and the National Library of Australia for their organisational contributions and sponsorship. Following the conference, 13 delegates undertook a whistle-stop post-conference tour to the national cultural and academic institutions in Canberra, hosted by the National Library, so our gratitude too to those who facilitated such wonderful tours. Music librarianship is much the richer in Australia for this experience, not the least because of the cooperation between all colleagues across Australia in hosting this truly international event.
Robyn
Holmes
Curator of Music, Music and Dance Branch
Member of the IAML Organising Committee
With acknowledgements to Daniela Kaleva, State Library of Victoria, and Michael Fingerhut, IRCAM, for use of their contributions to the IAML Australian and international newsletters, July–August 2007.



