Are we failing music students as a result of poor staffing priorities?

Recently, at a well-known university somewhere in this country, I approached the desk of the music library to seek help in finding the score of a particular work. The composer was Dufay: the work was the mass known as Missa L’Homme Armé, or The Armed Man.

The young lady at the library counter said that she had no idea what that was and asked her colleague who was seated at a computer elsewhere. Her colleague, on being questioned, also claimed no knowledge of the composer or the work.

After a lengthy discussion between these two young women it was decided that it would probably be better if they called someone from within the library who perhaps might know something about the work or the composer.

“There’s a chap here wants some piece I can’t pronounce. Yeah, an old guy…”

By now I had been at the counter for nearly five minutes. A phone call, made to the interior of the library, furnished me with the following snippets of conversation: “there’s a chap here who wants some...