Educationalist Phil Race - Assessment, Learning and Teaching

Education students here at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland will have heard their teaching staff talk about respected educationalist Phil Race.

We thought you'd be interested to visit his website to find out what he's working on these days, so here it is ... including keynotes, workshops, free downloads and details of his publications.

https://phil-race.co.uk/

Yee-Ha! new Koha Library System for the Whittaker on Wednesday

The Whittaker Library at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland will be

CLOSED WEDS 5 JULY 2017

for the changeover from our old library system to a new, modern one.

The Koha system we've chosen has been well-received by many other libraries,  and will - in a jiffy - make our online resources much easier to find, too.  (Impress the staff - ask about the 'discovery layer'!)

We've been practising on a test version, but the new system will be live for borrowers from when we reopen on Thursday 6 July. 

•  You can still use our online resources via the Library website, but you won't be able to use the old catalogue.  We'll be changing all weblinks to the new catalogue once it's live.
• Library website

RefMe becomes Cite This For Me (but doesn't work for me)

Do you use bibliographic referencing ("citation") software?  We do! We've tried various brands.  Many students fell in love with RefMe as an easy tool for saving your references and inserting them into essays and assignments.  We had some reservations, but in terms of ease of use, it had a lot going for it.  So we were interested to learn that the bibliographic referencing tool, RefMe has now become CiteThisForMe. 

• If you had a RefMe account, you can carry it across to CiteThisForMe.  You may or may not find that the bibliographies you transfer across, have expired.  (Mine were still there on my phone app, but not on the web version. Very strange!) 
•  If you're making a new account, however, it's a tad more confusing.  Your registration is incomplete unless you sign up for Premium membership - with attached cost. 
• Even more worrying - if you're a non-Premium user with a free account, your references are only saved for a week - really, not much use at all!
• Meanwhile, if you download the app, you can't login with your newly half-created free account.  (You can if you've got a transferred-across account from RefMe. That's confusing too.)

 It might be better to give up and go for Mendeley or Zotero.  Seriously! 

The International Journal of Traditional Arts "promotes a broad-ranging understanding of the relevance of traditional arts in contemporary social life"

IJTA - new, online, free!

This is a new scholarly e-journal coming from the Music Department at Newcastle University.  Edited by Dr Simon Keegan-Phipps (University of Sheffield), RCS alumnus Dr Simon McKerrell (now a senior lecturer at Newcastle) and Dr Mairi McFadyen (University of Edinburgh), the journal's homepage describes itself thus:-

"The International Journal of Traditional Arts is an international, peer-reviewed Gold Open access journal that promotes a broad-ranging understanding of the relevance of traditional arts in contemporary social life."

 Do take a look.  If you would like to contribute, the details are all there on the website:-

tradartsjournal.org/

tradartsjournal.org/

 

What Goes on in a Music Cataloguer's Head?

This week, the library was gifted a copy of The Scottish Orpheus edited by Adam Hamilton.  As with any donations, the first question we ask, is whether we've already got it?  We have - but not this edition.  We hadn't even heard of the editor, Adam Hamilton before! Not a problem - David Baptie's Musical Scotland dictionary usually comes up trumps, and it did again today:- 

Hamilton first published his The Scottish Orpheus around 1865 - it was published in Edinburgh by "Hamilton & Müller".  By the turn of the century (around 1897), it was being published in Edinburgh and London by Paterson - and that's the edition we've just been gifted.  It looks a competent collection.  There are no editorial notes ("paratext"), just a title-page and a contents page, and unlike some other collections of this era, there's no sol-fa, just normal music notation.

By 1922 it was published with the intention of being in in more than one volume, by J. Michael Diack - we already have Vol.1.  The contents are a little different, and Diack's edition contains a few more Scotticisms in the text.  It has also gone down from 215 to 159 pages, probably because he intended to publish a subsequent volume.

But that's not the end of the story.  There's no trace of a Scottish Orpheus vol.2, but Diack went on to publish a New Scottish Orpheus in three volumes, ca.1922-1937.   It must have been a commercially viable product - or at least, certainly worth keeping the title and updating the contents and arrangements!

Meanwhile, our new gift has been catalogued (and all the contents indexed, titles and first lines and all - phew!) and it'll go in our Special Collections.

Our catalogue system will be changing in July 2017. Until then, you can see the catalogue entry for Hamilton's Scottish Orpheus here.  (We'll post the link to the new catalogue nearer the time.)

Paul McCartney turns 75 (a tribute by German music librarian Katharina Jerusalem)

Fresh on the grapevine ... via our professional association, the International Association of Music Libraries (IAML), a tribute to Paul McCartney:-

"Paul McCartney will turn 75 tomorrow! In honor of this major birthday, Katharina Jerusalem from Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), Cologne, has written a tribute in German and English that focuses on his post-Beatles career. As an added bonus, Hansi Dequal has translated it into Italian for us."

http://www.iaml.info/news/18-juni-2017-happy-birthday-sir-paul

Can't I Just Photocopy the Part? Music Copyright Can and Can't Do's in the UK

Copyright guidelines courtesy of CILIP

So you've lost your viola part?  That could be a problem! You cannot just copy another one from the score without the publisher's permission.

Our professional association, IAML (UK and Ireland), has a very helpful web page telling you what is, and is not permissable in the British and Irish world of music copyright.  

Read all the do's and don'ts here:- UK Copyright FAQs, courtesy of IAML (UK and Ireland).

Also, do refer to the general guidelines produced by another professional organisation, CILIP:-

• International Association of Music Libraries, UK and Ireland Branch 
• Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals

Thoughts about a Pile of Old Music - The Long Tail of Research

Read Karen's musings about a pile of old pop music that she found the other day!  The Long Tail of Research

Yes, Whittaker Library is open all summer ...

Library Summer Hours

From today (Friday 16th June 2017), we operate summer hours: 

9-5 Monday-Friday, but closed at the weekend.

Visitors are advised to check the website if you're travelling a distance, just in case there are any unexpected changes to particular days.

Staff and students, remember you can still access all our electronic resources even if you're not around Glasgow. (Do ask for more details, if you've never tried before.)  And we're getting a new library system in July, so watch out for an enhanced catalogue experience too. It'll make it even easier to source lots of relevant materials.  Watch this space ...

Why is it always somebody else? Don't shoot the piano player

Today's the day everyone has to return their library books and music here at the Whittaker Library.  (Why is it always someone else's fault that a music part has gone astray?!)

We haven't lost a horn or even a horn part (yet) today, but this cheerful little Flanders and Swann song, "I've lost my horn",  is so nearly appropriate, and at least it cheers us up:-

Fiddler of Strathspey Festival, Grantown

Fiddler of Strathspey Festival

23-25 June 2017

Details of a fiddle festival - lots of fiddling events, recitals, sessions, workshops, masterclasses - and all in Grantown, home of the strathspey.  RCS alumna and tutor Lauren MacColl is amongst the many stars who will be there. Visit:-
http://thegrantownsociety.org/page5.html

Do you Teach the Accordion?

New in the library, the gift of a book - An International Overview of Accordion Pedagogy.  It was edited and published this year by Claudio Jacomucci.  Further publications about classical accordion can also be downloaded here. 

Claudio Jacomucci homepage:- http://www.claudiojacomucci.com/Home.html 

Signor Jacomucci runs an accordion masterclass in Amsterdam and Urbino - you can find out more at his website:- http://www.claudiojacomucci.com/AccordionAcademy/AccordionAcademy.html

When Good Research Goes Viral, by Diane Rasmussen Neal

Via Mendeley, we've heard of this really useful chapter about using social media to extend the reach of your research. And here's a link to the entire chapter: When Good Research Goes Viral, by Diane Rasmussen Neal

The article is in Social Media for Academics: A Practical Guide (2012) pp. 161-173 Published by Elsevier Ltd

The Dewar Arts Awards

We were surprised and delighted to read the success stories of the recipients of recent Dewar Arts Awards, particularly since RCS students are amongst them!  The trust has published a book commemorating 15 years of supporting promising young artists, and we have two copies in the library. 

You can also read the stories online, though - here:- http://dewarawards.org/fifteen/

For heartwarming interviews with young artists literally bursting with talent and passion for their art, you can't beat this special anniversary publication. 

• Dewar Awards

Resource of the Month: International Bibliography of Theatre & Dance

International Bibliography of Theatre and Dance

Every month we profile one of our best e-resources.  This one is a full-text database covering theatre, drama and dance including journals such as Dance Magazine, Modern Dance, Modern Drama, TD+T (Theatre Design and Technology).  Click on the link above, to start exploring this really useful resource.