Editor's note.(Editorial)

With this issue, the journal begins its celebration of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Music Library Association (MLA). For the next two years each issue will include at least one article that is devoted to a luminary of the association who has helped to shape it and the profession of music librarianship. For many of our readers, these names will be unfamiliar, for others, will evoke warm memories of cherished colleagues and friends.

The four articles that appear here were first presented on 26 September 2004 at a symposium in Berkeley, CA, during the dedication of the Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library. As such, they highlight the vast rare and special collections held by the library, many of which were brought to Berkeley by Vincent Duckles (1913-1985), its first librarian. Duckles began his tenure as music librarian at Berkeley in 1947, and in the decades that passed under his watch, built a collection considered unparalleled in the U.S. for its holdings of music manuscripts. He is of course well known to our readers as the author of Music Reference and Research Materials: An Annotated Bibliography (London: Free Press, 1964), an expansion of the syllabus for the graduate music bibliography course he created and taught at Berkeley (A Guide to Reference Materials on Music: Music 200, Fundamentals of Music Bibliography, ...