Wizrocklopedia

More Library Love for Wizard Rock

Freya

The placard outside Joy’s office reads “Collection Development and Wizard Rock Librarian”, but until a few weeks ago, “wizard rock librarian” didn’t mean much in the official sense. Recently, along with another librarian friend and wrock fan, Annette, Joy petitioned the Library of Congress to add wizard rock as an official subject heading. Now as far as the library community is concerned, “wizard rock librarian” carries a little more clout.

In case you don’t know, the Library of Congress (LOC) is the official library of the United States, and has been around since 1800. They maintain the list of subject headings that is used by libraries in the U.S. and around the world to classify books, movies, music – basically, any publishable media. It came about as an easier way to search for related materials.

Before “wizard rock music” became an official subject heading, anything wrock-related was classified as “rock music” or “Potter, Harry (Fictitious character) — Songs and music”. Annette and Joy felt that wizard rock deserved its own, separate heading. The idea started as just a general discussion, but once the library obtained a copy of The Wizard Rockumentary, the two started to seriously work towards this. Along with the help of a librarian from UCLA, they submitted their application, and the LOC approved it.

So what does this all mean? There is a database of collections from over 10,000 libraries called WorldCat. Any library that is part of the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) is searchable through WorldCat. If you look up The Wizard Rockumentary on WorldCat, you will see that on the right, the subjects are listed. Any other library that is part of the OCLC and adds The Wizard Rockumentary to their collection can download this record. Annette and Joy also made sure that if you search for “wrock”, you will be redirected.

You can see the official authority record here, and its place on the weekly list here.

As a general rule, the LOC doesn’t delete subject headings, which means that wizard rock will have this indelible mark for as long as the LOC continues to be around. Pretty impressive.
Much kudos to Joy and Annette!

Freya

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9 responses to “More Library Love for Wizard Rock”

  1. Dinahsaur Avatar
    Dinahsaur

    Wooo!!!! *dances and celebrates* Another victory for Wizard Rock!

    Freaking awesome work, ladies! You’re my new heroes right about now! <3

    Reply
  2. obockstal Avatar
    obockstal

    This is awesome !! Woot !

    Reply
  3. Tribi Avatar
    Tribi

    How permanent. Now we just need to have iTunes add it as a category.

    Reply
  4. Marauder Avatar
    Marauder

    “How permanent. Now we just need to have iTunes add it as a category.”

    And MySpace!

    Reply
  5. Martha Avatar
    Martha

    Wow! That is so awesome! But, yeah, now iTunes and MySpace need a wrock category.

    Reply
  6. Dinahsaur Avatar
    Dinahsaur

    So… Wrockers can convince the Library of Congress that Wrock is a legitimate genre, but we haven’t managed to convince Myspace, iTunes, or Facebook yet? I think perhaps an organized lobbying citing this case as a reason to allow it ought to take place.

    Alas, I don’t have the time for something of this magnitude. Anyone got the time and drive? XD

    Reply
  7. Georgia Riddle Avatar
    Georgia Riddle

    Wow!! Well done and congratulations! Nice to know the Library of Congress actually takes people’s ideas onboard. It’s annoying that iTunes and MySpace doesn’t have a Wizard Rock category yet. We should definitely start a petition or some other such means of acquisition.

    Reply
  8. JoyL Avatar
    JoyL

    First off, thank you to Freya for writing such an awesome post! Thank you to everyone for your supportive comments! Annette and I are pretty excited about the subject heading and proud that we could do something for Wizard Rock. I think everyone makes a good point that iTunes, MySpace and Facebook better take notice! Wizard Rock is a real genre of music, all it’s own, and should be recognized as such. You can’t get more official than the Library of Congress! What do we have to do to petition these groups?

    Reply
  9. WizardRockDA Avatar
    WizardRockDA

    I’ve been looking up information on online petitions for this very purpose, and it seems that they’re not taken very seriously when presented by themselves most of the time. It would seem that they usually lack a means of the petition recipient being able to verify that all of the “signatures” come from unique, real individuals, vs one person or a handful of people signing a bunch of times using different names and e-mail addresses each time or using a program to generate random names and e-mail addresses.

    We need some alternate ideas we could use either in addition to or in lieu of an online petition. Perhaps we can have someone who writes well draft up a real, paper petition, and bring it to LeakyCon, Azkatraz, and Wrockstock to collect signatures, making sure people know not to sign it at more than one event. For myspace, we could create a group titled “Make Wizard Rock a music genre on MySpace” or something along those lines too, and have all of the wrock bands and fans on myspace join. That type of thing doesn’t always work, but every way we can bring more attention to the issue helps. Another idea could be to find out mailing addresses to contact iTunes and MySpace and start a campaign to have people send them letters calling for an official Wizard Rock genre.

    Those are just a handful of things we can do, and I’m sure we can think of more. But the more different angles we approach this from and the more people we get involved, the more likely the companies are to notice us, and to accommodate our request.

    Reply

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