SLIS Student Profile
By Gloriane Peck
2 December 2003

Thomas Pease has worked with just about every aspect of music from singing with the Washington National Cathedral Choral Society to adding performance data to the archives of the National Symphony Orchestra.

Building on his wide variety of work experiences, Pease is earning his master of library science degree with a specialization in music librarianship at SLIS.

"Since I had so much experience working with orchestras and recordings, it just seemed natural that I should specialize in music librarianship as a career," Pease says.

As music librarian for three years at WETA-FM in Washington, D.C., Pease maintained the station's collection of more than 20,000 compact discs.

Listeners often would call to ask the name of a musical work they heard on the station.

"There were some great opportunities for reference questions," Pease says. "I got the opportunity to try first-hand to answer some challenging questions, and I was pretty good at it, so that encouraged me."

He also learned more about cataloging and using uniform titles to collocate multiple performances of the same piece. Developing the station's collection gave Pease the chance to work with record labels to grow the scope of the broadcast library, which served not just radio, but WETA's affiliate television station, a nationally known producer responsible for such programs as "The Civil War" and "Washington Week."

"I got to meet conductors, newsmakers, and other luminaries in the community," says Pease, who has a bachelors degree in music history from The College of Wooster. "Once I met Bill Moyers, and he told me that his personal librarian was one of the most important people to him."

Prior to working at WETA, Pease did graduate work in arts management at American University and served as an arts administration intern at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Talking with the orchestra librarian there helped Pease develop new interests.

Pease did some project work, while at WETA, for the National Symphony Orchestra. His next job, as the orchestra librarian for the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra, increased his interest in general music librarianship, particularly in academia.

Wanting more training, Pease decided to pursue his MLS at Indiana University.

"The Music Library Association was very helpful in identifying which schools have a strong component in music librarianship," he says. "Indiana was one of the best because of its staff of nationally renowned music librarians, as well as its large collection of music, literature about music, and recordings." The SLIS music librarianship specialization requires students to take M539: Music Bibliography and L631: Seminar in Music Librarianship. Students also must complete six internship credits, with three credits in cataloging and three credits in another area.

Pease plans to use his second internship to gain experience in the preservation and digitization of music. In the meantime, this semester he's currently enrolled in Music Bibliography, L520: Bibliographic Access and Control, and L401: Computer-Based Information Tools.

As an assistant at the Archives of Traditional Music, Pease gathers and organizes documentation of materials for the archives. He's also a music assistant at WFIU, where he catalogs new recordings and serves as a source of information about record labels and musical reference sources.

Pease enjoys being in the know when it comes to music happenings. At WETA, Pease says, "I kept everyone on top of what was going on in the classical music world. It was crucial to have someone with their ear on major happenings, such as if an orchestra had hired a new conductor. Those sort of events help to shape programming."

And he's always trying to pick up new skills.

"Im hosting a radio show and trying to learn as much as I can about producing and recording," Pease says. His "high-energy" show, "The Kitchen Party," features traditional music from around the world, particularly Celtic and bluegrass. The show airs from 5pm to 7pm Sundays on WIUS-AM 1570.

As excited as he is about working in a music library, Pease relishes the satisfaction from helping to connect people to great works of art and music. "There's this wide world of music that's much more interconnected than most people realize. I'm as much looking forward to answering questions about Bach as I am about trying to identify a song on pop radio. A music librarian should be prepared to answer questions about all areas of music--and that is a challenge I look forward to meeting."

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Posted December 02, 2003