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.
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]
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.
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
Policies of Cataloging and Classification in Self-Contained Music Libraries (masters thesis), by Anna Harriet Heyer, Columbia University (1939) OCLC14448022
State and Resources of Musicology in the United States (masters thesis), by Anna Harriet Heyer, University of Michigan (August 1943) OCLC41149927
^Training For Music Librarianship Aims and Opportunities, by Otto Kinkeldey, Bulletin of the American Library Association, Vol. 31, No. 8, August 1937, pp. 459-463
^Anna Harriet Heyer, An Isolated Pioneer, by Carol June Bradley, Notes, Vol. 63, No. 4, June 2007, pps. 798–805
^Rapid Growth in Library at Denton Shown, Dallas Morning News, September 28, 1941, Sec IV, pg 11
^18 Additions to Staff of Denton Teachers College,Denton Record Chronicle, September 20, 1940, pg 8
^ abA Biographical Directory of Librarians in the United States and Canada, Fifth edition,American Library Association (1970)
Who's Who in America (editions 55 – 57) Who's Who of American Women (editions 15 – 22) Who's Who in the South and Southwest (editions 19 – 27) Who's Who in the World, 2001 (2002) (19th ed)
