"The most significant change in acquisitions occurred when we went to an approval plan in 1991," Kodzis noted. Prior to the plan, librarians tried to anticipate which items would be of use to patrons, often based on pre-publication information and reviews. Most orders were placed as the result of faculty or student requests. "That's too late," said Kodzis. "We should already have the material in the library so it is here when it is needed. Our goal is to have everything available in the library that a person needs for coursework and research. The library cannot wait for articulation of need, because it is often too late."

Technology has changed acquisitions work from filing and maintaining paper files to more challenging tasks involving vendor selection, payment options, and problem solving. Today the same number of staff purchase nearly twice as many volumes of books, journals and other resources as they did fifteen years ago.

In July the Millennium system will replace the current library system, which is fifteen years old. The change provides an opportunity to review existing procedures and practices and utilize the latest developments in library technology, enabling Kodzis and other Acquisitions and Collections staff "to anticipate and meet the needs of the library patrons and provide an even higher level of service."

These pages can be reached from the Tisch home page by way of Research Assistance - Faculty (or Graduate Students), with the first page connecting, via "Use our directions" to the second.

Instructors can make appointments with librarians to discuss ways to integrate library research and resources into their classes. If you have questions about linking to articles in your Blackboard class site, contact Anna Neatrour (7-6207).

Thomas Christensen, Department Chairman and Professor of Music at the University of Chicago, and a theorist and historian of music theory with special interests in 18th-century intellectual history, problems in tonal theory, historiography, and aesthetics, presented "Theory in Practice and in Theory." Music theory is a discipline that by its nature seems pulled in opposing directions. On the on hand, it lays claim to a distinguished scholarly tradition of learned speculation seemingly removed of practical value; on the other hand, it possesses an equally venerated pragmatic lineage rooted in the exigencies of music pedagogy. Attempts by theorists to reconcile these competing claims has constituted a recurring tension in music theory. Using selected historical texts of music theory found in the Frédéric Louis Ritter Collection, Professor Christensen demonstrated some of the ways theorists in the past have attempted to mediate the conflicting aims of musica theorica and musica practica.

Ellen T. Harris, Class of 1949 Professor of Music at MIT, is a musicologist whose work focuses on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially the music of Handel and Purcell, opera and vocal performance practice. Professor Harris spoke about "The Music Lover in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century England." The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed revolutionary changes in music repertoire, not just in terms of genre but also in the growth of an historical perspective. This period also saw a significant and related expansion in the audience for music. All three of these factors: formal and generic musical innovation, the establishment of an historical canon in performance, and the impact of sociological changes on the growth of audiences for music, led to an important shift in the kind of book written for music lovers. Using selected texts published in England during these two centuries preserved in the Frédéric Louis Ritter Collection, Professor Harris presented how writing about music for amateurs during these two hundred years shifted from practical manuals to historical and critical commentary and discussed some of the underlying causes for this change.

Bruce Alan Brown, a specialist in 18th-century opera and ballet, has been on the Musicology faculty of the University of Southern California since 1985. The Frédéric Louis Ritter Collection at Tufts University includes a rich array of primary source materials for the study of French opera, from the era of Lully through the Empire period and beyond. In his lecture "The Production, Promulgation, and Politics of Opera in France During the Enlightenment," Professor Brown used these to illustrate developments both in the spectacle itself and in the printing and marketing techniques that put it before the public, emphasizing also its status as a site of struggle between the monarchy and emerging, more 'Enlightened' segments of society.

Susan Youens, Professor of Music at Notre Dame University; is the author of many books and articles on composer Franz Schubert and the history of the German lied. Professor Youens highlighted one very special score in "Translating a Winter's Journey: Winterreise en français." One of the rarities in the Frédéric Louis Ritter Collection at Tufts University is what may well be the first complete edition of Franz Schubert's great song cycle Winterreise (Winter Journey), op. 89, in French translation. Individual songs from the cycle had been printed in France by French music publishers as early as 1834, but this volume issues from the Viennese firm of Tobias Haslinger, the publisher for the first edition of this masterpiece in 1827. Why he published it is an intriguing matter for speculation, while the translation is fascinating for its conversion of Wilhelm Mueller's German wanderer into a quasi-French mixture of Voltaire and Hugo.

The website entitled The Frédéric Louis Ritter Collection : A Paradigm for Special Collections Access and Use features primary source material as well as the scholarship of these noted professors and authors to increase teaching and research use of the Frédéric Louis Ritter Collection at Tufts and elsewhere.

The Tufts community is invited to a demonstration of the website on April 29th, 4:00-5:00PM, in the Electronic Resource Center in Tisch Library. Also being demonstrated on April 29th will be another Berger-funded project: the Digital Boston Geotechnical Database for Research, Teaching, and Technology Transfer in Education. For further information, consult the Berger Grant Awards page. The websites for these projects (the fifth and sixth annual awards) are expected to be accessible after April 29th.

At Tisch Chao will serve as a reference liaison to the departments of Art History; Drama; German, Russian and Asian Languages; and Romance Languages. She will also be working to move reference services beyond the borders of the library building to other settings on campus where users can benefit from them. Expect also to meet her at the Tisch reference desk, where she will be happy to answer your questions!

The Frost presentation copies will be a featured part of an exhibit unveiled in Tisch Library on April 23, 2004, the day of the Tufts Poetry Walk. The exhibit marks the cataloging of the Frost books, an endeavor that has required many hours of research to identify the texts of the inscriptions (usually untitled, and sometimes with minor variations from published versions), and to detail the unique qualities of these books. The exhibit, located in the corridor alongside the Hirsh Reading Room, will include other books and memorabilia from the Holmes Collection, and will run through August 18.

Staff News

Congratulations go also to staff members Steve McDonald (Acquisitions) and Leah Nelson (Cataloging) for graduating with a M.S. degree in Library and Information Science from Simmons College this past year.

Library Instruction Group Meets at Tufts

New Online Database

Contributors to this issue:

Charlotte Keys

Amy Lordan

Anna Neatrour

Marsha Starr Paiste

Michael Rogan

Christopher Barbour

Photographer: Thomas Cox (1st photograph)

Editor: Margaret Gooch