This year’s meeting of the Music Library Association was held online, and, following the latest trend, offered several sessions on generative AI. Metadata discussions posed the question “Can AI be an author?” In both copyright law and cataloging standards, the answer appears to be “no”: the legal term “author” applies only to humans; RDA, the current international cataloging standard, requires an author to have agency. Catalogers always have the option to add a subject term for a specific AI tool, if discoverability for AI assistants is desired. A colleague at McGill studied faculty use of AI in undergraduate instruction: many reported strategies such as guidelines in the syllabus, reviewing citation, requiring verification, and asking students to show their prompts and AI content in an appendix. Students reported that they turned to AI for starting ideas, and for finding resources; they also showed awareness that not all results could be trusted, and that their instructors would be evaluating their own original thinking, while AI only uses existing ideas.

An MLA working group is developing a music companion to the ACRL Information Literacy Framework, and recently interviewed music instructors on their students’ IL abilities and needs. They note two major trends. One is increased participation in a diverse landscape — interest in under-represented composers and performers, which often requires research farther afield when there is no entry or worklist in standard reference sources, or when creators distribute their work outside traditional publishing channels, as well as issues of ethical use when older works use harmful language, etc. The other trend is in career paths — flexibility and transferable skills are the new watchwords, when there are now fewer full-time positions in music, and aspirants must develop entrepreneurial skills and a working knowledge of licensing and copyright.

The recent discontinuation of a widely-used musical notational software has lent heightened urgency to the question of preserving composers’ creative process in the digital age. Two colleagues presented a survey they’ve done of composers in academe and in music-related industries, regarding preservation practices they use for their own work. Most use digital tools, including notational software, and most use redundant storage/backup strategies. But they also report struggling with issues of obsolescence, increasing costs of digital storage, and lack of time to properly organize and archive their works. Many discard early sketches, due to lack of space, both physical and digital. Clearly there is a role for archives and libraries here, in providing both resources and guidance. Archives and libraries themselves are challenged by issues such as legal limitations on the emulation of obsolete proprietary software for preservation purposes, and limitations of digital tools themselves, such as tablet-based performance software that (unlike paper scores) doesn’t preserve the performer’s annotations.

MLA will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2030, and proposals are already being floated. Below are some that could be used by just about any library-related organization:

Commission a new work.

Engage regional chapters: they would know of local creators to promote.

Highlight a work created/published in each year of the organization’s existence (an opportunity to highlight lesser-known works or under-represented creators).

Highlight creators associated with past meeting sites.

Consider a performance of a work that has not been notated/written (music, oral tradition, etc.): a great sensory offering in a conference program.