Flashback
40 years ago
Music Library celebrates 40th anniversary
A student enjoys state-of-the-art technology and the view in the Music Library, circa 1970. Photo: UB ARCHIVES
Forty years ago, the University Libraries’ collections of music materials were moved from several locations in the Lockwood and Harriman libraries to newly renovated space on the second floor of Baird Hall, then on the South Campus. On Feb. 2, 1970, the doors of the Music Library opened for the first time.
In his annual report for 1969-70, founding director James Coover felt compelled to explain the loss of cataloging productivity created by the “inch-by-bloody-inch move to Baird,” noting that for the two months preceding the move, fully half of the staff’s time was devoted to effecting the move of some 25,659 volumes of scores, parts, books and periodical volumes.
This volume count hints at the pace at which Coover and Carol June Bradley, associate founding director, were building and cataloging the music collection. Arriving in mid-1967, they had found a dispersed collection of 6,000 scores and parts, and incomplete runs of music periodicals, and set upon the work of building and organizing a music library that could support the research and teaching demands of an active music department. Cataloging productivity resumed following the move and by 1972, cataloged holdings numbered nearly 42,000 volumes.
The space in Baird Hall was created for the Music Library by the Department of Music, which relocated WBFO, the campus radio station; the band’s rehearsal space; and two contiguous offices to make room for the music collection. Shortly after the move, planning began for library space in the new music building on the North Campus. After the Music Library moved to Baird Hall on the North Campus in 1981, WBFO moved back into its former studios in what is now Allen Hall on the South Campus.
—Nancy Nuzzo, Music and Special Collections
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