The PlayBack homepage
by Andrew Harbison
The Seattle Public Library launched PlayBack just over a month ago with 50 incredible albums by Seattle’s musicians, joining libraries in Madison and Edmonton as the latest to build a local music collection using Rabble’s MUSICat platform.
From the start, the Seattle community has wholeheartedly embraced PlayBack. The library received a flood of submissions—nearly 300 albums—during an open call to local musicians. Seattle is an active and amazing music city, and MUSICat sites are incredibly effective at generating opportunities for community engagement.
These kinds of collections—built on a licensing relationship between the library and the artist—seem to automatically generate engagement that goes beyond collection use, teaching communities about the amazing work their neighbors create. This makes PlayBack the perfect project for The Seattle Public Library, which has a strategic goal of engaging local creative communities in new ways by offering relevant, inclusive, and participatory programs and services, as well as representing the work of these communities in the Library’s collections.
These kinds of collections—built on a licensing relationship between the library and the artist—seem to automatically generate engagement that goes beyond collection use.
Albums from PlayBack’s opening collection
Librarians in Seattle are working hard to foster engagement by integrating the digital and physical aspects of their collections, programs, and services. One great example: the launch party held at Seattle’s historic Columbia City Theater that featured performances by PlayBack artists Sun Breaks and Fly Moon Royalty as well as a popular local radio station DJ Sharlese from KEXP’s Audioasis local music program who was spinning PlayBack artists all night.
The Library plans to identify ways it can integrate PlayBack music and artists into other programs and services. For example, plans are in the works to play and promote PlayBack music at author readings and other events. PlayBack albums exist in the Library’s general catalog, alongside books, media, and other content in the collection. The Library is also prominently featuring and promoting PlayBack on its social media channels.
Grace Love and the True Loves Artist page in PlayBack
These ideas demonstrate how The Seattle Public Library team is embracing PlayBack’s potential as a vehicle for supporting local artists. The Library paid $10,000 in licensing fees to 50 musicians for the opening collection and is working with other community partners to strengthen collective resources to better support local artists. Librarians also feel very fortunate to have a Foundation that is supportive of the Library’s interest in—and need to—innovate.
Challenges often come with innovation, and we have had our share. Managing the jurying process for 300 submissions pushed us to create new solutions. The library team developed a new evaluation workflow for the community jurists who helped curate the opening collection. They also spent time working with their business office to find a way to compensate artists within existing systems and standards. The Rabble team learned a lot about how to make MUSICat’s administrative tools more supportive of large jurying processes. These are exactly the kinds of challenges we were hoping to face as this amount of successful engagement is a welcome problem to have!
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