The view from the window of my room at the Hotel Olümpia was spectacular, looking over the red roofs of the Old Town to the Baltic beyond, where ferries sailed in from Stockholm, Rostock, Helsinki. Even more spectacular was the IAML conference itself, located in the adjacent well-equipped Conference Centre, and brilliantly organized by our efficient Estonian hosts. From the opening session at the Mustoeade Maja, the House of the Brotherhood of Blackheads, to the Farewell Dinner at Theatre Vanalinnastuudio, not to mention the two concerts, Crossover organ and overdrive guitar, and the superb Baltic Voices and following reception at the National Library of Estonia, and the Wednesday excursions, providing an opportunity to see something of the Estonian countryside, everything was quite splendid. Aurika Gergele iu and her team deserve-and received, I think, at the farewell dinner-the thanks and congratulations of everyone.

Not surprisingly there was an Estonian theme to many of the presentations. A plenary session on Estonian music dealt with traditional music in modern Estonian society, the collection and preservation of Estonian traditional music, folk hymns as a source of Cyrillus Kreek's compositions, the use of traditional music in the works of Veljo Tormis, and the Anthology of Estonian Folk Music. We also heard about the dissemination of Estonian classical music recordings, a survey of the career and recordings of Neeme Järvi, and also the recordings of the music of Arvo Pärt, recordings of Estonian choir music in the sound archives of Estonian Radio, the music of Eduard Tubin, and the Estonian copyright act and libraries.

Other topics included updates on the progress of our R-Projects, Toolbox, a national Intranet service from Denmark to enable public librarians to share their knowledge and experience (www.musikbibliotek.dk/toolbox), and along similar lines, MUSICNETWORK, a European Commission funded activity aimed at bringing various aspects of music information providers into the interactive multimedia environment (www.interactivemusicnetwork.org), a complex but thought-provoking presentation by Barbara Tillett from the Library of Congress about the functional requirements of bibliographic records, and information about resources available in various libraries and archives in various countries. There were also presentations about a number of online resources, such as the Online Bach Bibliography and the Swedish Music History Bibliography, and various digitization projects, such as the ERPANET project in the Netherlands. An interesting new experiment was an introductory session, giving many participants the opportunity to speak for about five minutes about new ventures in their respective countries.

The Council meeting had its usual amount of good news, bad news, and general information. The bad was confined to a proposal to increase the dues by ten percent in 2005, as IAML's reserves at the moment are gradually shrinking, and would reach an unacceptably low point without an increase, which was approved. This means that institutional dues will raise from fifty to fifty-five Euros, and individual dues from thirty to thirty-three. It was also agreed to merge the two Outreach funds (the first for the payment of transporting materials, and the second to provide conference funding for attendees from developing countries), to provide more money for the latter purpose. Fontes is gradually catching up with its production schedule, and should be back on track within a year or two. Editor John Wagstaff has an impressive line-up of prospective issues in the wings. Really good news is the foundation, at last, of an Austrian branch, thanks to the endeavours of Thomas Leibnitz of the Österreichisches Nationalbibliothek. The question, "When will we have an Austrian branch?" has now been replaced by "When will we be invited to meet in Vienna!" We were also very interested to have representatives from Armenia for the first time, who told us about music libraries in their country, and also have hopes to form a national branch someday. Also on the topic of national branches was the approval of a slight change in the Constitution to allow for a branch to be formed by more than one country. This is an enabling change, designed to make it easier for countries that initially might not have the resources to form a branch of their own, but could form an alliance with a neighbouring country.

Future conferences: for those who might have foreign travel plans in mind, here are the IAML conference locations for the next few years: 2004 - Oslo, Norway, August 8-13; 2005 - Warsaw, Poland, July 10-15; 2006 - Gothenburg, Sweden; 2007 - Sydney, Australia; 2008 - Naples, Italy; 2009 - Amsterdam, Holland; 2010 - presently shrouded in mystery, but there are plans afoot; and 2011 - Dublin, Ireland.

All in all, it was a very informative and exciting week, and once again, as one can never say it too often, many thanks to the Estonian branch for its efforts on our behalf.

Alison Hall
Carleton University Library

© Canadian Association of Music Libraries / L'Association canadienne des bibliothèques musicaux