UCLA Library’s Online Publishing of Music Scores Makes History

From UCLA:

Composers from 86 countries have submitted more than 7,800 musical compositions as part of a collaborative project by the UCLA Music Library and the Los Angeles–based Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra to highlight the work of living composers and bring it to a wider audience by making it available online.

The project, which the organizers say is the largest call for scores in the world, also represents the largest open-access publishing effort for contemporary music compositions, with more than 6,000 of the submissions — including scores by recent finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for music — being published on eScholarship, an open access repository where UC scholars share their work.

“The music library’s unprecedented collaboration with Kaleidoscope advances the library’s leadership in the area of open access publishing by making accessible a significant number of compositions for future performance and scholarly work,” said university librarian Ginny Steel. “At the same time, it offers living composers the opportunity for their music to be seen and studied by musicians and musicologists located around the world.”

Kaleidoscope, founded by clarinetist and UCLA alumnus Benjamin Mitchell, launched its Call for Scores program in 2015 to recognize the most innovative and engaging music being written today. Each year, the conductorless orchestra selects a number of scores from among the annual submissions to perform publicly, including at UCLA.

[Clip]

The discussion of open access publishing has often focused on journal publishing in the sciences, even though the products of academics and researchers in the arts and humanities are more diverse. This project diverges significantly from past open access projects by focusing on music compositions and by publishing current, under-copyright work.

Read the Complete Article

Direct to Kaleidoscope

Filed under: Academic Libraries, Libraries, Management and Leadership, News, Open Access, Publishing