Following the announcement of the intention to close the Yorkshire Libraries Music and Drama collection, Making Music's Chief Executive Robin Osterley attended the YLI Council's meeting on 3 November, and has been invited to join its working party to consider the various proposed solutions at its next meeting on 12 December. YLI has since agreed to begin a short period of review and investigation of possible ways to keep the service open and the collection together.
YLI issued the following statement after its meeting:
"We continue to recognise the significance locally and nationally of this collection. We are committed to ensuring that it remains available on a sustainable basis to the public. We have already received some expressions of interest and are inviting further such expressions from groups for the future provision of the music and drama service from April 1st 2012 by 30th November 2011.
We will do all that we can to try and find a solution to this issue, so that alternative provision can be arranged in time for when current arrangements end."
Some expressions of interest have already been submitted for consideration, and an online form is now available, with a deadline of 30 November for submissions. See the YLI website for more information.
Thanks to the efforts of Making Music members and others, YLI has received over 2,500 emails and letters protesting about its decision to stop the Music and Drama Service. 60% of these came from outside of Yorkshire.
The music collection at Wakefield is one of the most important in the country, and comprises over 500,000 items of music and 90,000 copies of plays, thus making it one of the largest collections of performing sets in the UK. It is available not only to individual users, schools and music and drama groups in the Yorkshire and Humber area but also to organisations and groups outside of the region on a pay per use basis, so this is a decision that could affect amateur performing groups throughout the UK.
Posted: Sat 29th October 2011