Resources for Representation: Supporting Discovery of Gender Diverse Creators in Music

Abstract

Many users of the Cook Music Library come to browse the stacks for new music to perform, but the collections they browse there are not complete. In addition to three floors of open stacks, the Cook Music Library hosts a large collection of non-browsable scores, books, and sound recordings in the frontlog. To support the Cook Music Library’s vision to “improve access to and discovery of the collections” and to commit to Indiana University Libraries’ foundational value of diversity, we consider how to facilitate better access to the library’s non-browsable materials and highlight diverse and underrepresented composers and performers. A collaboration between technical and public services, this project first prioritizes works of trans and gender-diverse people. We take into consideration recent recommendations for recording gender in personal name authority records–consider the problems with and identities excluded from current description practices–and examine how they affect discovery of these materials. We present our progress and reflect on the significant challenges in developing services that supplement the catalog, compensate for areas where current cataloging practices might fall short of supporting user searches, and improve access to non-browsable materials at the Cook Music Library.