Library and Information Services, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

Friday 18 November 2016

Another Day in the Life of a Music Librarian

We regularly get invitations to speak to groups of students about library and research resources. (Karen thinks consultations in Waterstones' Costa outlet would be nice, but our seminar rooms are probably more convenient ...)

Today, it was the turn of the third year traditional musicians. We were talking about resources that might help with their forthcoming projects.  So ... first we talked about the projects, and then about the resources ...

  • we looked at our e-resources via the library web-pages, and talked about how to log in from outside the RCS campus or when a particular resource requires it (such as Scran)
  • we explored Oxford Music Online, JSTOR, Scran, Medea (the RCS dialect resource) and others
  • We talked about referencing, what Harvard referencing is, how to keep track of your reading, and online ways of keeping your references safe, eg RefME, Mendeley and Zotero. (Or a regularly-updated Word document!) 
  • We also looked at the RCS new portal, and the Whittaker Library portal pages (you can find them by clicking on Student Support, or just click here.)
  • and the specialist subject gateways on our library portal pages ... lots of good stuff on the music pages!
  • We explored HMS.Scot, and the National Library of Scotland's Digital Gallery
  • And we talked about the great collections of Scottish music at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow, the Universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen, the National Library of Scotland, the A K Bell public library in Perth and the Wighton College in Dundee Central Library
  • And just mentioned some of the protocols of visiting rare books collections - pencils, not pens, bags in lockers (and booking what you want to see in advance, in some cases!)

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