ABSTRACT: From Historical Collections to Metadata: a case study in Scottish Musical Inheritance, paper by Dr Karen E McAulay, Music & Academic Services Librarian, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. The contemporary librarian is more than ever before a conduit for making historical material available to scholars and performers alike. The challenge in today’s world is not only to augment the crucial early manuscripts and publications with appropriate electronic versions, but to provide added value by enriching them with contextual and interpretative information. The 3-year AHRC-funded project, Bass Culture in Scottish Musical Traditions, seeks to address this set of issues in Scottish bagpipe and fiddle music. Involving the Universities of Glasgow and Cambridge and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, it will provide a substantial web resource of sources and their interpretation, engaging with musicians working in a number of traditions to develop historically-informed practices. The aim is to enable musicians to have an understanding of the structures underpinning Scottish fiddle and pipe music, enriching the traditions with a deeper, more widespread appreciation of the diversity of their roots. The metadata requirements of the two repertoires have similarities and divergences; flexibility is needed to apply suitable metadata across both. Compatibility with pre-existing approaches is also a prerequisite. By October 2014, we will be building the web resource; this conference would provide a perfect opportunity to share an innovative collaboration between musicology, librarianship and web development.

1. From Historical Collections to
Metadata
A case study in
Scottish Musical Inheritance
Karen E McAulay, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

3. Timeless and
Unchanging?
1822, and 1845:
William
Marshall’s
updated piano
accompaniment

4. “It's disturbing when I see kids on buses,
listening to music on their phones, and
it's just going: tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, with no
bass. Bass culture is Jamaica's gift to the
world and technology is, kind of, ruining
that. Bass is sexy.”
Don Letts, ‘Is this it?’, The Guardian, 4
April 2009
Photo: Eamonn McCabe
But why, ‘Bass Culture’?

5. Charles Gore
From book to database
http://www.scottishmusicindex.org/

6. • Gore’s system based
on:-
• Breandan Breathnach’s
Irish collection, Ceol
Rince na hEireann,
(Breathnach & Small,
1963)
Gore’s Index

7. Wighton Heritage Centre Dundee
http://www.leisureandculturedundee.com/library/wighton
• Friends of Wighton
http://www.friendsofwighton.
com/contact.htm
• Temporary Wighton Database
Search Facility
http://www.johnbagnall.info/
allwighton.html

8. Early American Secular Music and Its
European Sources, 1589–1839: An Index
• http://www.colonialdancing.org/Easmes/Index.htm

9. Nigel Gatherer’s Traditional Music
• http://www.nigelgatherer.com/index.html

10. National Library of Scotland
Digital Gallery http://digital.nls.uk/gallery.cfm
Special Collections of Printed Music
http://digital.nls.uk/special-collections-of-printed-
music/pageturner.cfm?id=97135480

11. copac* – Union Catalogue for UK
University and National Libraries
http://copac.ac.uk/

12. Work in Progress

13. Outputs
Hms.Scot
• 22 tune-books digitised
• Searchable by tune titles, personal names and places
• Incipits and cadences
• Visual comparisons
• Commentary on collections, tunes and paratext
• Spreadsheet contents

14. Project Social Media
Twitter @bassyculture
Blog: Bassculture.info/
Don’t just follow – talk
to us!

15. • Dr Karen McAulay
• K.McAulay@rcs.ac.uk
• @bassyculture
• @karenmca
• BassCulture.info/(Mrs Gordon of Knockespoch mp3)

16. Concerto Caledonia was playing
‘Mrs Gordon of
Knockespoch’, from
William Marshall’s
Volume 2nd of a
Collection of Scottish
Melodies, Reels,
Strathspeys, 1845