Monday, November 30, 2009

IAML conference

Marilyn Portman, music librarian attended the IAML conference on 5-6 November 2009 in Wellington.

What is IAML??
IAML stands for International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres. This is an organisation that promotes, encourages and helps to facilitate projects in music bibliography, music librarianship and information science at an international and local level.

The New Zealand branch meet every year for a conference and AGM. This year it was held in Wellington at the Massey University and also at St Paul's Cathedral and I had the pleasure of meeting with colleagues and fellow music librarians from around the country.
I will share a couple of sessions that were or real interest.

Session one: Music in the school curriculum
speaker Vicki Thorpe, Music advisor, faculty of Education at Victoria University

Vicki covered the NZ Curriculum 2007 and the Arts and the NCEA requirements for music. She looked at the current issues and challenges for music education in N.Z. Changes to the NCEA 2011 were explained and general changes in music education explored in line with rapid changes in technology. There are big issues in NZ music education at primary level especially with no more arts advisers in primary schools and a great lack of teacher knowledge and skill in the arts. Issues facing secondary schools lie with the teachers having to be very adaptable and figure out whether they want formal or informal learning, inside or outside of the classroom. Where and how does music learning actually happen?

  • Libraries are in a key position to be able to provide support and resources for teachers and students in their life long musical learning. By having a varied and interesting collection of music at their library, a whole new world can open up to them that they may not have known existed.
Here are some websites to check out and explore:

http://arts.unitec.ac.nz
http://www.tki.org.nz/e/community (arts kete)
http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz (learning areas/achievement objectives)


Session two: Focusing on copyright - the RIANZ perspective
speaker Campbell Smith, CEO of RIANZ

What is RIANZ??
It stands for Recording Industry Association of NZ. It is a not-for-profit organisation who represents the rights of the recording industry as a whole.
RIANZ works alongside PPNZ(Phonographic performances of NZ) and APRA (Australasian Performing Rights Association) however, what is becoming evident is that confusion reigns with the number of different licences required and there are moves afoot to unifying the licences to make a more efficient and logical model.

What does RIANZ do?
  • maintains the NZ charts, gold/platinum sales
  • controls ISRC (same as an ISBN number)
  • Runs the NZ music awards
  • Polices piracy

Now we are in the digital world

The recording industry is commercially unstable at present and income is declining. The major contributing factors are file sharing and RIANZ have been looking at ways to approach this problem. They would like to work with the ISPS to have a staged approach as they feel the user has a right to due process. The ISP would send out issue notices to infringers, basically educating them and pointing out legal down lad avenues and then if behaviour hasn't improved would suspend their account.

RIANZ would like to have a three pronged appropach to their business:

  • gain legal certainty for the protection of rights
  • Education of users - go into the highschools and teach about intellectual property
  • stop sulking! look at new opportunities to sell content to generate income. Come up with more ways and means of getting music into users hands.

RIANZ and libraries;

RIANZ have basically buried their heads in the sand when it has come to libraries and pretend that we don't have music. However, they are keen to talk and explore different options. There is the "Authors Fund" that compensates authors for having books in libraries, why couldn't there be a similar thing for musicians?

IAML(NZ) are very keen to spear head dialogue with RIANZ and so hopefully this will bear positive fruit for libraries and musicians alike in the future.

Thankyou to Auckland City Libraries for enabling me to attend this conference

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