Heyer, Anna Harriet, 1909-2002

Anna Harriet Heyer, 92, a music librarian, died Monday, Aug. 12, 2002, in Fort Worth.
Graveside service: 9 a.m. Thursday in Greenwood Memorial Park. Friends are invited to attend the memorial services at 10 a.m. Thursday in the sanctuary of University Christian Church with Dr. Scott Colglazier officiating.

Memorials: Music Library, Texas Christian University; Music Library, University of North Texas, Denton; University Christian Church; or charity of choice.

Anna Harriet Heyer was born in Little Rock, Ark., on Aug. 30, 1909, the daughter of Arthur Wesley and Harriet Gage Heyer. After a childhood spent in the Middle West, Kansas City, Mo., and Washington, D.C., she moved to Fort Worth with her parents in 1924.

She graduated from Central High School in 1926. She earned two degrees summa cum laude from Texas Christian University in 1930, a bachelor of arts in mathematics and a bachelor of music in piano. She completed graduate degrees at the University of Illinois with a B.S. in library science in 1933; Columbia University with an M.S. degree in library service in 1939; and the University of Michigan with a master of music degree in musicology in 1943.

She taught music in the Fort Worth public schools in 1931-32; was a high school librarian at Stripling Junior/Senior High School 1934-37; and at Arlington Heights Senior High School 1937-38. She was a cataloguer in the University of Texas Library in Austin 1939-40. In 1940, she became music librarian and assistant professor of library service at North Texas State Teachers College in Denton (now the University of North Texas). She started the music library at the school and was the first full-time music librarian in Texas. When she left the school in 1965, the collection had grown to become the largest music library in the Southwest. In 1965, she joined the library staff at Texas Christian University as consultant on music library materials. She retired in 1979.

Awards included honorary life membership in the American Library Association; honorary life membership in the Music Library Association; a special citation in 1980 by the Music Library Association for her contribution to music librarianship; and a special citation in 1983 by the Texas chapter of the Music Library Association for her contribution to music librarianship in Texas; She was honored with an emeritus librarian status from the University of North Texas in 1976. Her study at the University of Michigan resulted in membership in Pi Kappa Lambda, honorary music society. She is listed in Who's Who in America, Who's Who of American Women, Who's Who in the South and Southwest and Who's Who in the World.

She was a charter member of the Junior Woman's Club of Fort Worth and a founder and first president of the Muarda Club, a section of the Junior Woman's Club. She was also a life member of the Woman's Club of Fort Worth. Other memberships include the American Association of University Women, Mary Isham Keith Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, University Place Book Club, Hobby Group of the Texas Christian University Woman's Club, Sigma Alpha Iota music society, Texas Christian University Retirees Association, life membership in Friends of the Texas Christian University Libraries, Friends of the University of North Texas Libraries, emeritus status in the Altrusa Club, Colonial Country Club and University Christian Church.

She enjoyed handwork and won second place at the Texas State Fair on a hand-embroidered cross-stitch picture. She was interested in weaving, and won several blue ribbons on hand-woven pieces she entered at conventions of the Contemporary Handweavers of Texas. For a number of years she wove the designs for her Christmas Cards.

She was the author of "A Bibliography of Contemporary Music in the Music Library, North Texas State College" (now University of North Texas) published by the school in 1955. The American Library Association in Chicago published three editions of her music bibliography, "Historical Sets, Collected Editions and Monuments of Music: a Guide to their Contents," 1957, 1969 and 1980. The Music Library Association selected it as the best book-length music bibliography published in 1980. She also contributed articles to music journals.

Survivors: Having no immediate survivors, she is survived by distant cousins, close friends, Sonya Books and Stephanie Books, and other friends.

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Anna Harriet Heyer (1909-2002) first achieved profession-wide recognition in 1957 with the publication of her groundbreaking bibliography, Historical Sets, Collected Editions, and Monuments of Music: A Guide to their Contents (Chicago: American Library Association). Previously, she had been recognized by a small cadre of colleagues located largely in New York: Richard Angell, who taught the first music library course at Columbia University; Catharine Keyes Miller, who succeeded him; and Otto Kinkeldey, then librarian at Cornell University. Doubtless she was not the only person influenced by Kinkeldey's 1937 article in the ALA Bulletin, which offered the first guidelines for appropriate education for music librarianship; beyond his influence on her education, he redesigned her Historical Sets to reflect post-World War II needs and aided in its compilation. Except for those distant colleagues, she worked in isolation, the only music librarian in Texas, indeed that part of the country.
Anna Harriet Heyer was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, 30 August 1909. Her mother, Harriet Gates Heyer, born in Dallas, Texas, and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, was a graduate of the University of Cincinnati - a Latin and Greek major - and the library school at Western Reserve University. Her father, Arthur W. Heyer, born and raised in Cincinnati, also a graduate of the University of Cincinnati, was a civil engineer. During Heyer's childhood the family moved around the Midwest, finally settling in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1924. After graduating from high school, Heyer entered a local university, Texas Christian University (TCU). There, influenced by an excellent high school math teacher, she was a math major with a piano minor.2 Upon graduation in 1930, her excellence in the math program brought a TCU scholarship for additional study. Using the provisions of the scholarship [preview ends]

Anna Harriet Heyer (30 August 1909 Little Rock, Arkansas – 12 August 2002 Fort Worth, Texas) was a distinguished American academic music librarian, musicologist, and bibliographer who for 26 years, from 1940 to 1966, headed the Music Library at University of North Texas.[1]

Career
Otto Kinkeldey, a renowned music librarian and musicologist, had given a lecture in 1937 at the first joint meeting between the American Library Association and the Music Library Association in New York City. In his lecture, Kinkeldey outlined a concept for an appropriate education in music librarianship.[2] Until reading the transcript, Heyer had never contemplated a specialization in music librarianship — she had not even known it existed. The concept intrigued her because, in her words, "It would give me a chance to be within an interest that I like and still do library work."[3]

Heyer traveled to Columbia University the summer of 1938 to enroll in a course taught by Richard Angell in "Music Library Administration" — the first any such course had been offered in the country. She stayed on at Columbia for the academic year 1938–1939, earning a Master of Science in Library Science, June 1939.

After spending a year working for the libraries at the University of Texas at Austin, Heyer, in 1940, accepted a position as the first full-time Music Librarian at the University of North Texas, whose College of Music (then referred to as School of Music), had, that same year, upgraded its 1939 induction as Associate member of the National Association of Schools of Music to Institutional member.

Heyer rapidly strengthened the Music Library, which already housed formidable collections, into a major music resource institution. She also forged music librarianship as a field of academic study by teaching the first known academic courses in the discipline.[4] When she arrived, North Texas had acquired sizable collections that included orchestral scores, sheet music, phonograph recordings, and the Carnegie Corporation reproducing unit.[5][6][7][8]

While working for North Texas, she earned a Master of Music degree from the University of Michigan in 1943.[6][7][8]

In 1957, Heyer published a groundbreaking bibliography, Historical Sets, Collected Editions, and Monuments of Music: A Guide to their Contents.[9][10] This reference stood for decades as one of the essential reference tools in the field of Western classical music. For comprehensive research music libraries, it became a guide for holdings.

Education
1930: Bachelor of Arts, Mathematics with a minor in piano, Texas Christian University
1930: Bachelor of Music, Texas Christian University
1933: Bachelor of Science in Library Science, University of Illinois
Summer 1938: Studied Music Library Administration under Richard Sloane Angell (1905–1985), School of Library Service, Columbia University — Angell was the music librarian at Columbia
1939: Master of Science in Library Science, Columbia University
1943: Master of Music, University of Michigan