Laikin Dantchenko

Laikin Dantchenko is the Music Audiovisual Metadata Librarian at Cook Music Library. Her primary duties include bibliographic and archival description of all audiovisual and sound recording materials held by the Music Library as well as creating and maintaining all descriptive metadata for the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music performance recordings. She also catalogs all music materials in Slavic, Eastern European, and Central Eurasian languages and scripts.

Laikin's research focuses on community-centered description in bibliographic and name authority records, alongside reparative description practices for creators and music materials from former Soviet countries. She has published and presented internationally on her archival work with Soviet punk music, including "From Leningrad to Bloomington: Fëdor Lavrov's Soviet Punk Legacy and the Ongoing Relevance of Dissent" (Fontes Artis Musicae 72, no. 2). Additionally, Laikin has contributed to scholarship on respectfully representing Indiana University Jacobs School of Music performers and composers, emphasizing their agency in "Representing Gender-Diverse Creators in Indiana University Cook Music Library's Online Catalogs" (Chapter 16, Inclusive Cataloging: Histories, Context, and Reparative Approaches, ALA Editions, 2024). Her ongoing projects, presentations, and publications address reparative cataloging of Ukrainian musicians, notably in “Preserving Ukrainian Identity: Ethical Cataloging of Ukrainian Music in Soviet Publications” (Music Reference Services Quarterly, July 5, 2024).

Beyond her cataloging responsibilities, Laikin serves as an adjunct instructor at the Luddy School of Informatics at Indiana University. She teaches ILS-Z504 Introduction to Cataloging for all library science students, co-teaches ILS-Z655 Seminar in Music Librarianship, and supervises cataloging internships for music librarianship graduate students (ILS-Z605).

Laikin is affiliate faculty for the Robert F. Byrnes Russian and East European Institute, serves on the board of the Music OCLC Users Group, and is an active member of the Music Library Association Cataloging and Metadata Committee.

Before joining Cook Music Library, Laikin served as a student metadata assistant at the University of North Texas Music Library while pursuing a Master of Science in Library Science at UNT, specializing in Music Librarianship and earning a graduate certificate in Archival Management. She also holds a Master of Arts in Musicology and a Master of Music in Vocal Performance from the University of Georgia, where she worked as a student archival assistant, creating finding aids for the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards at UGA Special Collections. Laikin earned her Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance from the University of Kentucky.