Griscom, Richard

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Disciplines
Library and Information Science
Research Projects
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Position
Director of Collections and Liaison Services
Introduction
Richard Griscom has more than twenty-five years of experience building collections that support a broad range of music studies in classical and popular music, jazz, and world music. Before coming to Penn in 2004, he was head of the music libraries at the University of Louisville and the University of Illinois. He holds a master's degree in musicology, and he has remained active in performance throughout his career. After seven years as an orchestra percussionist, he took up the recorder and currently performs with the Penn Recorder Ensemble. Dick is active in the Music Library Association, and he edited the association's journal, Notes, from 1997 to 2000. He is also coauthor of The Recorder
Research Interests

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
  • Publication
    Distant Music: Delivering Audio over the Internet
    (2003-03-01) Griscom, Richard
    Advances in audio technology in the 1980s and 1990s made it possible for librarians to create digital copies of sound recordings and to provide off-site access to them through streaming-media servers. Because streaming technology could accommodate heavy use at odd hours from any location, librarians quickly applied the new digital audio technologies to curricular listening assignments, providing a parallel to the print "e-reserves" projects developed by academic libraries during the 1990s. The results of a survey of thirty-nine digital audio reserves projects offers information on streaming formats, streaming rates, access control, user interfaces, staffing, equipment, and costs.
  • Publication
    Digital Audio in the Library
    (2006-06-01) Griscom, Richard
    An incomplete draft of a book intended to serve as a guide and reference for librarians who are responsible for implementing digital audio services in their libraries. The book is divided into two parts. Part 1, "Digital Audio Technology," covers the fundamentals of recorded sound and digital audio, including a description of digital audio formats, how digital audio is delivered to the listener, and how digital audio is created. Part 2, "Digital Audio in the Library," covers digitizing local collections, providing streaming audio reserves, and using digital audio to preserve analog recordings.
  • Publication
    Periodical Use in a University Music Library: A Citation Study of Theses and Dissertations Submitted to the Indiana University School of Music from 1975-1980
    (1983-04-01) Griscom, Richard
    In an effort to measure in-house use of music periodicals, a citation study based on bibliographies in theses and dissertations was conducted at the Indiana University Music Library. A total of 256 titles were cited, but only 30% were cited more than once. While the periodical literature cited by musicologists has a low rate of obsolescence, the periodicals cited by theorists and educators becomes obsolete at a rapid rate, making the rate of obsolescence for the field as a whole, fairly high, unlike other subject areas in the humanities.
  • Publication
    MLA-L at Twenty
    (2008-11-20) Griscom, Richard
    MLA-L, the electronic-mail distribution list for music librarians, is now twenty years old. Before the establishment of the list in 1989, professional communication among music librarians was paper based and slow. The growth of computer networks in the early 1980s led to the development of applications to promote group communication, including LISTSERV, an e-mail distribution application released in 1986. With the help of Mary Papakhian, a member of the information technology staff at Indiana University, Ralph Papakhian established MLA-L as the first distribution list on the university's LISTSERV server. Growth of the list was rapid: by the end of 1995, there were over 1,000 subscribers, and since then the number has slowly increased to over 1,100. The topics of discussion on MLA-L cover all aspects of the profession, and the archives of messages posted to the list provide a rich resource for the study of the history of music librarianship.
  • Publication
    Francis Johnson: Music Master of Early Philadelphia
    (2008-04-10) Griscom, Richard; Ramsey, Guthrie P.; Rogers, H. Carton
    Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr., Associate Professor of Music, University of Pennsylvania, delivers a lecture on Francis Johnson (1792-1844), Philadelphia band leader and composer. Johnson holds a special place in the history of American music. Although a free African American, he lived in an age when racial segregation and prejudice were commonplace. Despite these obstacles, he was able to achieve extraordinary renown and respect among the elite of Philadelphia through performances of his band at balls, parades, and promenade concerts. Following a series of concert tours late in his life, Johnson's fame eventually extended through the Midwest and across the Atlantic to London. His music survives today in piano arrangements published during his lifetime. The lecture marked the opening of an exhibition in the Otto E. Albrecht Music Library. The exhibition included a selection from the over forty pieces of Johnson sheet music in the collection of the late Kurt Stein. Also part of the exhibition were prints, period newspaper articles, and a Kent bugle like that favored by Johnson. To download a podcast of the lecture, select one of the additional files below. Welcome, H. Carton Rogers, 00-04:52 Introduction, Richard Griscom, 04:52-13:06 Lecture, Guthrie P. Ramsay, Jr., 13:15-37:27 The event announcement is also available for download, by selecting the download button, at upper right. The exhibition is available in an online version, at: https://web.archive.org/web/20160422121347/https://www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/music/fjohnson/
  • Publication
    Content Recruitment and Development: A Proactive Approach to Building an Institutional Repository
    (2006-10-11) Griscom, Richard; Hassen, Marjorie; Kerbel, Sandra; Steiner, Mary D
    Describes the history of ScholarlyCommons@Penn and the service-oriented approach the staff have taken in recruiting participants and building content.
  • Publication
    Apulia: Undiscovered Italy
    (2013-01-01) Griscom, Richard
    Suggested readings for the Penn Alumni Travel event in Apulia. See the Library Guide for this bibliography here.
  • Publication
    Publishing Undergraduate Research Electronically
    (2007-10-24) DeTurck, Dennis; Griscom, Richard
    The College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania has as a goal expanding opportunities for undergraduates to conduct significant research and promoting the products of this research. CUREJ, the College Undergraduate Research Electronic Journal, was developed in collaboration with the Penn Libraries to achieve this goal.