Music OCLC Users Group
Distinguished Service Award
February 22, 2006

Presented to Bettie Jean Harden, University of North Texas

PRESS RELEASE

The Executive Board of the Music OCLC Users Group (MOUG) is honored to name Bettie Jean Harden as the sixth recipient of MOUG's Distinguished Service Award.

This award has been established to recognize and honor a librarian who has made significant professional contributions to music users of OCLC. The MOUG Executive Board selects a recipient based on nominations received from the MOUG membership. Jean received the award during MOUG's annual business meeting, on February 22, 2006, in Memphis.

Jean Harden began her professional library career in August of 1992, when she began work at the Sibley Music Library of the Eastman School of Music as a retrospective conversion cataloger. She brought a rich background to cataloging- a Ph. D. in musicology from Cornell University, and MLS from Syracuse, a solid record of research and publication on medieval music, a good grounding in music bibliography through work in the US-RILM office and contributions to the New Harvard Dictionary of Music and the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, and a history of leadership, in particular as president of the International Machaut Society. Jean attended her first MOUG meeting in 1993. Her MOUG activities accelerated with her move to the University of North Texas in 1994. In 1995, UNT joined the NACO Music Project, and Jean became the first independent contributor at UNT, serving as the reviewer for other catalogers in the UNT Music Library, as well as for other NMP participants. Jean ultimately served on the NMP advisory Committee.

In subsequent years Jean served on several MOUG task forces, and her penchant for organization led to her nomination and election as Chair-Elect of MOUG in 1999, with service as Chair from 2000-2002. Jean's tenure was marked by MOUG's joint meeting with the ONLINE Audiovisual Catalogers (OLAC) in Seattle in 2000, by significant advances in documenting responsibilities and activities of MOUG officers, and by sharing with the membership her manifest enjoyment of our profession and her belief in its possibilities. Her service to MOUG has continued with a productive stint as chair of the Nominating Committee. Jean has also been an active member of the Music Library Association - as Chair of the Automation Subcommittee (now the Integrated Library Systems Subcommittee), a member of the Nominating Committee, and a current member of the Bibliographic Control Committee, Authorities Subcommittee. She has been Chair of the Innovative Music Users Group since 2002, and sports a very long list of publications and presentations. Jean remains engaged with Machaut studies and with RILM, and is also an active church musician.

The activities that prompted Jean's nomination for this award were those of teacher and role model. In settings formal and informal, in classrooms and conference sessions and at her desk, Jean has shown herself to be "an incredibly meticulous, knowledgeable, and thorough music cataloger," to quote the nomination letter, and has encouraged the rest of us to be the same. MOUG is proud to honor Jean for her accomplishments, and looks forward to many more years of her continued service.

Return to: MOUG Award Page OR

Last updated 15 February 2011