Fran Bennion Archive

Frances Lusk Bennion worked as a musical data specialist at CCARH (the Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities) from 1985 until her retirement at the end of 2010. She was especially conversant with string and orchestral music. She played cello and piano, but the larger part of her musical background may have consisted of many years of accompanying her four gifted children to music lessons up and down the San Francisco peninsula.

Fran had an instictive tendency to understand every detail of each task. The nature of the work was novel: Walter Hewlett was developing a comprehensive system of encoding classical music of suitable quality for use by professional groups. Walter always understood the details to pertain to particular operations of data structures. Fran was eager to keept details in order. She trusted very little to memory and in consequence wrote copious notes. While CCARH retains a lot of top-down documentation, Fran's copious notes capture elements of oral discussion that cannot be found in more formal sources. We are sharing the most fundamental of these with readers here. Those concerned with early phases (ee.g. Stage 1 and Stage 2) of MuseData may find these of particular value.