Abstract
For several years now, libraries, publishers, and vendors have worked out a means of creating, licensing, and delivering e-books in academic settings. While the art of the academic e-book is perhaps not quite yet perfected, conservatively speaking, today’s students and faculty will find and use at least one e-book in the course of their academic career and be more or less satisfied with the experience. E-scores, however, are only now coming to occupy the attention of librarians and not a moment too soon as commercial e-score vendors with subpar quality content manage to meet the functionality needs of most users. Many living composers are harnessing the Internet and cutting out the middle man by offering e-scores in the form of downloadable PDFs. Score publishers are, by and large, still in the early stages of thinking about moving to e-score format (also for personal downloads), and vendors with e-score platforms are negligible. This paper opened the conversation about e-scores to acquisition librarians, e-book publishers, and vendors who typically work outside the music library.
The first half of this paper provides an overview of the current state of e-scores in academic libraries, including what patrons want from e-scores, what score publishers are doing, what libraries are currently able to provide, and, finally, what commercial vendors are already doing. The final portion of the paper briefly reviews responses from the conference session audience. Through this open questioning, it is hoped that readers will come to new understandings of their own work with other electronic materials, while at the same time bring their expertise to bear on the future of e-score development.
Contemplating E-Scores: Open Ruminations on the E-Score, the Patron, the Library, and the Publisher
For several years now, libraries, publishers, and vendors have worked out a means of creating, licensing, and delivering e-books in academic settings. While the art of the academic e-book is perhaps not quite yet perfected, conservatively speaking, today’s students and faculty will find and use at least one e-book in the course of their academic career and be more or less satisfied with the experience. E-scores, however, are only now coming to occupy the attention of librarians and not a moment too soon as commercial e-score vendors with subpar quality content manage to meet the functionality needs of most users. Many living composers are harnessing the Internet and cutting out the middle man by offering e-scores in the form of downloadable PDFs. Score publishers are, by and large, still in the early stages of thinking about moving to e-score format (also for personal downloads), and vendors with e-score platforms are negligible. This paper opened the conversation about e-scores to acquisition librarians, e-book publishers, and vendors who typically work outside the music library.
The first half of this paper provides an overview of the current state of e-scores in academic libraries, including what patrons want from e-scores, what score publishers are doing, what libraries are currently able to provide, and, finally, what commercial vendors are already doing. The final portion of the paper briefly reviews responses from the conference session audience. Through this open questioning, it is hoped that readers will come to new understandings of their own work with other electronic materials, while at the same time bring their expertise to bear on the future of e-score development.