Essay crisis? Who are you going to call?

First year music students at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland have essays on the horizon.  Where to start? 

• Assemble any notes you've already made
• Check the library catalogue.  (Do ask the staff if you need help with finding things in the catalogue or on the shelves!)
• Don't forget all the electronic resources available to you.  The library website has an A-Z of e-resources (all of them) or just the Databases.
• DATABASES: Get an idea of what's available by consulting JSTOR (full-text articles) or RILM (abstracts/summaries of a wide range of items) 
• We just subscribe to the JSTOR music package, so do make sure you're using the "Items available to me" tab, and not "all items".
• With RILM, an advanced search means you can select English language materials - or items in other languages.  We can obtain items from elsewhere, but it's not usually necessary unless you're writing a dissertation or extended essay.
• E-journals - look at our A-Z list, and see what might be useful.  Articles are generally full-text.  If you can't gain access to a whole article, consult the library staff.
• Streamed music services - Naxos or Classical Music Library.  You'll need to login if you're off-site.  Ask us if you need a reminder of the login. Archival Sound Recordings are useful for historical topics.
• Scottish theme to your essay?  Don't forget Scran - multi-media resources - pictures, photos, film, sound, images of old Scottish music ... (What is Scran? Click here)
• Ask the subject librarian if you get stuck at any point in your researches.
• And the Effective Learning Services team are always on hand to help, too. Contact them at:- els@rcs.ac.uk

News - University of Exeter - Short walk cuts chocolate consumption in half

News - University of Exeter - Short walk cuts chocolate consumption in half Stuck on an assignment? Go for a walk before hitting that chocolate bar! (Recent research finds this helps!)

NUS: inductions should continue beyond 'hello'

'Whittaker' found this in the THE this week:- NUS: inductions should continue beyond 'hello' 

Oh yes, indeed! Here at the Royal Conservatoire, the Whittaker Library has been very keen to continue the induction conversation beyond the initial 'hello'. And now we find the NUS agrees with us - what wonderful news!

Visit NUS Connect, on the National Union of Students website, to read more about the NUS Charter for Academic Support.

EU Screen - Conference in Budapest, September 2012

Look! A conference with NO conference fee!

EU Screen, 13-14 September 2012, Budapest

EUscreen organises its third and final conference on the topic Television Heritage and the Web. The conference takes places at ELTE University in Budapest, on Thursday, September 13, and Friday, September 14, 2012. Attendance is free, but registration is required

Conference Topic

 
The television landscape is evolving at tremendous speed. According to Eric Schmidt, former CEO at Google, “the Internet is fundamental to the future of TV”. Most broadcasters are struggling to grasp the pitfalls and potentials of the net. Emerging viewing patterns involve increased interactivity, non-stop availabilty and the evidence of choice.
 
The current shift suggests new ways of looking, where a web-centric view becomes more and more popular. Broadcasters’ resources are being redirected to web based forms of TV and the ‘archive’ increasingly becomes an asset, since it can attract potential users online. The major question for audiovisual archives, educators  and researchers these days, is what the current web-based shift implies for television heritage.
 

The EUscreen project puts more than 30.000 televisual items online in an act to make historical audiovisual content widely accessible. The conference Television Heritage and the Web attempts to discuss and analyse the potentials and pitfalls of the current media transition.

Conference programme  - The programme of the conference will be published soon. You can sign up for our newsletter, follow us on Twitter or register your attendance on http://euscreen2012.eventbrite.com to stay up to date.

 



Scottish Theatre Archive - searching the collections

Searching the Scottish Theatre Archive

.
http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/sta/search/

Special Collections at Glasgow University Library host the Scottish Theatre Archive.  And that means you can search their fabulous database.

For example, 'Whittaker' wanted to find out more about Hal D. Stewart, a playwright in our collection.  Easy!  I found all the biographical info I needed with this search link

You'll immediately see just how useful this is.  Here's the basic search:- http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/sta/search/

Digitised Librettos

What could be better news to the average singer than a bunch of links to digitised libretti?

These suggestions have been made by German and Italian music librarians, members of IAML (The International Association of Music Libraries):-

Goethe Universitat (University of Frankfurt) digitised music, film, theatre resources - including librettos. 

This library has large collection of libretti (about 3000) from about 1750 to 1930. Digitizing them slowly - now up to now 458 libretti. You can find them on the repository website http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/solrsearch/index/search/searchtype/collection/id/16108


Also, in the digitized collection of music ("Noten") there are some complete opera scores e.g. manuscript of "Don Giovanni" by W. A. Mozart or a print of "La Vestale" by Spontini.

Raccolta Drammatica - digitised libretti, Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense Digitised libretti - about 10,000 libretti.

Another interesting link is the Italian union catalogue (Il Catalogo online del Servizio Bibliotecario Nazionale, or OPAC SBN), which lets you search lots of library catalogues at once.

Wan ye were jist a wean: Poem to Robert Burns for the Year of Homecoming, 2009

This verse (it doesn't claim to be Poetry) - may only have a transient presence online. Written for Scotland's Year of Homecoming in 2009, 'Whittaker' has decided to air it in honour of The Bard himself - Robert Burns.

Wan ye were jist a wean, Rab,

Yer’ Mammie didnae ken

That ye her eldest wean, Rab,

Wad be the toast o’ men;

An’ wan ye learned tae count, Rab,

An’ read an’ write an’ spell,

Ah reckon she’d hae nodded, lad,

And said ye’d done richt well.

Wan ye were growin’ up, Rab,

Ye’d no’ much time tae read,

From dawn tae dusk ye worked, Rab,

Till ye were aff yer heid

Wi’ boredom at the ploo, Rab –

It wisnae tae yer taste,

Thank heavens that yer Daddie didnae

Leave yer brains tae waste.

A tutor showed ye buiks, Rab,

Ye grew tae love the words;

Ye lo’ed the lassies tae, Rab –

A rare man wi’ the birds!

You wrote braw verse aboot them,

An’ word o’ ye soon spread;

It wisnae lang ere ye were writin’

Sangs to earn yer bread.

A man’s a man for a’ that –

‘Twas ye that penned the line;

Ye kept yer’ common touch, Rab,

Tho’ minglin’ wi’ the fine.

Twa hunnert-fifty years, Rab,

We’ve no’ fergot yer name,

An' ye’re our national bard, Rab,

The Year o’ Comin’ Hame!

In accordance with Rabbie’s custom, this song has been penned by Karen E. McAulay to a weel-kebnnt air: 'John Anderson, my Jo'.

Cellist Paul Fournier

Cataloguing a donated cello CD, I was curious to find out more about the cellist.  Here's a very useful Korean page - clearly a labour of love by compiler Youngrok Lee.

Pierre Fournier, Prince of the Cello
(1906-1986)

The CD that prompted my interest?  Fournier accompanied by the Festival Strings Lucerne, playing Vivaldi, Haydn and Boccherini cello concertos.  Rudolf Baumgartner conducted.

See what Fournier CDs, books and music are in the Whittaker Library here.

Celebrating the Bard

Robert Burns

• Vocal scores in the Whittaker Library at the Royal Conservatoire of Music
• CDs (we just searched on Burns as Author.  More results using a keyword search.)
• Robert Burns in our book collections

Late 18th/early 19th century collaborators with Burns included James Johnson (of Scots Musical Museum fame), and George Thomson.  Thomson got Burns' lyrics set by famous Continental musicians like Haydn, Beethoven and Kozeluch.

You could also look him up in one of our databases, like Oxford Music Online (for info), Naxos or Classical Music Library (streaming services).  See what's available to our staff and students here.

Celebrating Burns

• The BBC has a fantastic page for Robert Burns (biography, 716 works, and all about Burns Night)
• Steve Jones' audio slide show inspired by Robert Burns (a page on the BBC site)
• Scottish Storytelling Centre - Burnsfest this week (w/c 22nd January 2012)
• Scottish Poetry Library - similarly a significant week for Burns enthusiasts here.
• Echoes from the Vault - the St Andrew's University Library Special Collections blog has today posted about Burns. A truly beautiful page.

Royal Opera House - what it's like being an opera singer

From the ROH website:-

Jette Parker Young Artists - Insight Evening

21 February 2012 (Calendar)
Clore Studio Upstairs

Introductory: suitable for newcomers

Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes | No Interval

Generously supported by
the Paul Hamlyn Education Fund

Next Performance Tue 21 Feb 2012, 7:30 PM

Buy Now

Background

Since 2001 The Royal Opera’s Young Artists Programme has been contributing to the development of the opera stars of the future with coaching ranging from music and sword-fighting to stagecraft and media training. Here, current members, alumni and Royal Opera House staff divulge the intensive two-year process.
Tickets: £16.30 | £7.10 students

Encant - Equality and Diversity Arts Festival

Just circulated by internal mail at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland:-

Encant

ENCANT is a radical, inter-disciplinary Arts Festival about EQUALITY and DIVERSITY across genres and across the board in Glasgow. We're looking for student and graduate performance artists, film-makers, visual artists, musicians, poets, dancers and writers to submit proposals for a piece of work based around the subject of equality and/or diversity to be performed/installed in several venues on the 9th and 10th of March. This exciting festival is in collaboration with the E and D RCS Forum and the GSA SU.

 
See www.encant.org for more details and to submit applications or email abudge@rcs.ac.uk or a.josephinebudge@gmail.com for more information.
 
Festival pass tickets are free for all RCS and GSA students (excluding the lounge night event) and will be on sale from the 10th of Feb.

Write Now at AyeWrite festival - 9th March

Creative writing event at Glasgow Mitchell Library's AyeWrite! festival

9th March - Write Now

AyeWrite! Glasgow book festival

Friday 9th - Saturday 17th March 2012

AyeWrite! home page 

Can't miss it - AyeWrite! book festival promoted by Glasgow's Mitchell Library. 

• Loads of Author events
• You can't miss our own Principal, John Wallace, talking with co-author Sandy McGrattan on 11th March between 2-3 pm about their new book, The Trumpet.
• Whittaker Live's own page about John Wallace and Sandy McGrattan's new book.
• Start marking events in your diary!

John Wallace and Alexander McGrattan, The Trumpet

The Trumpet /Wallace and McGrattan

The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland Principal, John Wallace, and colleague Alexander McGrattan, have written an authoritative new book on the trumpet, which is to be published this month.

The Trumpet is to be released by Yale University Press, 27 January 2012.   

• Amazon link here. 
• Yale Books link here.
• The authors appear at Glasgow's Aye Write! festival on 11th March, between 2-3 pm.  Details here.

Celtic Diaspora

"Whittaker" thinks it's important for Celtic musicians to be aware what's going on in other Celtic lands.  With that in mind, we've added a few Welsh CDs to the Whittaker Library stock.  Take a look here.

Image by Ogwyn Davies

I've also been indexing useful websites onto my Diigo account.  Here are the Welsh sites.

And then - did you think I'd omit the Irish websites?  (Me, half-Welsh, wed to a Scot, two of whose great-grandparents came from Ballymoney; I have genuine Celtic pretensions!)

Welsh bagpipes

Released 5 years ago, but it takes a while for these things to filter through the misty Celtic borders ...

‘This is a new CD by Ceri Matthews, a solo album of pipe music played on the pibe-cyrn (bag-hornpipe). This is the first recording devoted entirely to the instrument.’

And we have it here in the Whittaker Library at M145 M.  There!  I hope you’re impressed!  Find it here.

Gathering Momentum

New post, on Reflections on a Creative Scotland by Andrew Dixon. 

Digitised guitar music

GUITARISTS!


From the Royal Irish Academy of Music, a very important announcement:-

"Users can now view online the music contained in the entire Hudleston Collection of printed guitar music in digital format.  This is freely accessible via the Royal Irish Academy of Music online catalogue.

"This unique resource, held in the RIAM special collections, contains over 1,000 works for guitar (both solo and chamber music) in original editions from the 19th century.


"It was the private collection of Josiah Andrew Hudleston (1799 - 1865) who lived for many years in Madras and subsequently settled in Ireland in 1857. Throughout his life, Hudleston collected works for guitar composed by his contemporaries, several of whom he knew personally. This corpus of work represents a very flourishing period in the history of guitar music, featuring composers such as Giuliani, Sor and Carulli, and many other lesser known names.


"You can search for material by going to our online catalogue http://library.riam.ie/ and selecting "Hudleston Collection" from the menu of options.


"We welcome any feedback on which can be sent to library@riam.ie "

Many thanks to the Royal Irish Academy of Music Library for alerting us to this fabulous resource.

Intellectual Property Rights

Thanks to our Educational Technologist for flagging up this interesting news item from The Guardian newspaper today - copyright in the arts and humanities. 

Wheesht around the World

Have you bought your Whittaker Library Wheesht bag?  Environmentally friendly, and you can join in our Wheesht around the World Flickr project as well, if you take your bag somewhere photogenic or unexpected!