Lisa Read joined in July 2024 as the Music Librarian at Mendel Music Library. She is the subject specialist and library liaison for music, dance, theater, and musical theater.

Read received her bachelor’s degree in music history and Spanish from The College of Wooster, and a master’s of library science and a master’s degree in musicology at Indiana University. At the University of Hartford, she served as subject-specialist librarian in music, dance, and theater and led the public services team of the Allen Library (a music and dance library), teaching information literacy, providing research consultations, creating website and social media content, overseeing circulation and collection management, and assisting with collection development. 

What role do you play as Music Librarian? 

One of my primary duties is to oversee the Mendel Music Library. I provide strategic guidance on our goals, priorities, and projects; supervise staff who manage these projects and our day-to-day operations; and I shape our collections by acquiring printed and online resources for music, dance, theater, and musical theater. As the subject specialist and library liaison for these fields, I provide research consultations for individuals and library instruction for courses and other groups. And perhaps most importantly, I create and maintain relationships with our student and faculty researchers, creators, and performing artists to ensure that Mendel’s collections, services, and facilities support their needs today and into the future.

What is your favorite part of your work? 

I love helping people with their research and creative projects. I get to learn about all the interesting things our students and faculty are doing in all areas of the performing arts. Sometimes it’s like a treasure hunt tracking down specific recordings, manuscripts, or bits of information. Helping people find the resources they need is incredibly rewarding.

Are there any pieces in PUL’s collections that you are particularly fond of? 

It’s so hard to choose, and I’ve only just started exploring the amazing resources at Princeton! One of my favorite collections to explore is Mendel’s facsimiles (copies) of composers’ manuscripts. They are fascinating because you can see some of the compositional process on paper—original notation that’s been scratched out or glued over with something different, notes in the margins, etc. The original manuscripts are housed in archives around the world and can be difficult to access, but these facsimiles are right on the shelves here in Mendel.

Do you have any suggestions or tips for people who are new to using the collections/resources at Mendel? 

The first tip is to explore—we have an incredible number of resources here on the shelves, online (including streaming audio and video), and through other libraries. The Mendel webpage is a great place to start discovering some of those resources for music, dance, and theater. 

My second tip is to ask our staff for help. With all the resources available, there’s unfortunately no single way to search through all of them at the same time. Librarians have extensive training and experience with specific resources, tools, and search strategies to find things you may have thought didn’t exist, or that you didn’t even think to look for. No question is too big or too small to benefit from a librarian’s help, and it’s what we love to do!

What goals do you have as Music Librarian (or for Mendel Library more broadly)?

I have a lot of goals! One of them is to restart our exhibitions in Mendel, and we’re currently working on an exhibit to showcase current and past Princeton faculty and students who have won or been nominated for Grammy Awards. Keep an eye for that to be installed at the end of the spring 2025 semester. The exhibitions and many of my other goals relate to a larger objective of addressing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility issues. That includes accessibility of Mendel spaces, inclusivity of exhibits and artwork, diversity of collections, and so on. 

Current and previous Mendel staff already made progress on a number of issues before I came along—for example, acquiring music and recordings outside the classical sphere or classical music by composers of underrepresented groups, and digitizing unique collections to make them available to a worldwide audience. There’s still a lot of work to be done, and I want to make sure we continue to make progress in those areas.