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MOUG ANNOUNCES 2009 DISTINGUISHED SERVICE AWARD RECIPIENT

The Executive Board of the Music OCLC Users Group (MOUG) is honored to name Michelle "Mickey" Koth as the eighth recipient of MOUG's Distinguished Service Award.

This award was established to recognize and honor those who have made significant professional contributions to music users of OCLC. The MOUG Executive Board selects recipients based on nominations received from the MOUG membership. Koth received the award in Chicago during MOUG's annual business meeting on February 18, 2009.

Koth's achievement lies in both her prodigious output and her commitment to supporting others through teaching, mentoring, and the creation of practical tools, all of them developed and delivered following the highest standards of excellence known to the profession.

She has been a music cataloger at Yale University since 1990, but had previously been part of the Associated Music Libraries Group Title II-C retrospective conversion grant at Indiana University, where she converted over 15,000 music bibliographic records. She informally shared her experiences at a MOUG meeting in 1990, then published an article entitled "Workflow Considerations in Retrospective Conversion Projects for Scores" in the monograph Retrospective Conversion: History, Approaches, Considerations.

While at Indiana, Koth became one of the first catalogers to contribute headings as part of the NACO Music Project. As a long-time independent member, she has contributed or updated over 20,000 records. Again, these contributions represent more than numbers: Her work was of the highest quality. In addition, she was instrumental in creating the NACO Music Project Handbook and still maintains its Web site today.

Koth has created or published several other resources that provide valuable day-to-day aid and advice to music catalogers, non-music catalogers trying to catalog music, and reference librarians. Her extensive Web site, "Music Cataloging at Yale," was one of the first to provide specialized information on the Web for music catalogers-though it by no means serves only catalogers–and it continues to offer a wealth of definitions, quick reference tables, and readings, all of them current and accurate. She served on MLA's original Working Group on Types of Compositions and continues to maintain the online list. She served as MOUG Board member and Secretary/Newsletter Editor from 1998 to 2002. She has been the editor of the Music Cataloging Bulletin since 2001, and single-handedly converted it from a print publication to an online tool available to subscribers from the MLA Web site. Just last year she published a book entitled Uniform Titles for Music.

Most importantly, Koth has shared tirelessly and unstintingly of her time. The music cataloging community has benefited from her music cataloging workshops over the years. She is held in the highest esteem as a trainer by her colleagues, and as the letter of nomination received by the MOUG Board stated, she have been a mentor to others who "go on to catalog at other institutions, thereby enriching the OCLC database for all music users. … Few people have contributed at this level."

Koth's efforts personify MOUG's objectives "to promote and maintain the highest standards of system usage, and to provide for continuing user education that the membership may achieve those standards." MOUG is proud to honor her for her accomplishments.

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Last updated 15 February 2011