On Library Closing Music: Could It Be a Way to Promote Library Music Resources and Liberal Arts Education?

abstract: This paper explores the potential value of library closing music—originally designed as functional music for daily closure—in promoting both library music resources and liberal arts education. After introducing the concept of closing music and analyzing its relationship to background music, the paper examines the legal protection of library closing music through WIPO's "library exceptions" and China's intellectual property regulations. The core case study provides a "thick description" of the Tianjin University Library's closing music project from an "emic perspective" in the cultural anthropological sense, covering its design, implementation, selection principles, along with one music theme and three explanatory note examples, to illustrate the project's style, quality, and value aspirations. It also discusses audience engagement with the project, highlighting listeners' responses and interactions. Based on this case, the paper demonstrates how closing music can offer a new "in-library music appreciation" model while also encouraging the further use of related musical materials, thereby enhancing the utilization of library music resources. Following this, the paper reviews the history of music in liberal arts education and examines its modern fate, further proposing that the role of the music librarian, much like Socrates' "midwife," is to guide students toward a liberal arts education through "conversation" with "good and desirable" music. Building on this idea, the paper concludes with an educational practice: a liberal arts course creatively adapted from Tianjin University Library's closing music and its explanatory notes as teaching materials.