Enter the 2nd Berlin International Music Festival

We received an email about this music festival today.  You have three weeks to the deadline. Better get busy with that application!

2nd Berliner International Music Competition

• Piano - Strings - Voice - Winds - Brass
• Online Competition (No travelling)
• Recitals at Berlin Philharmonie
• Over 25,000€ in prizes
• Audio and video recording
• Deadline: June 15

VIDEO SELECTION – Traveling is not required to apply

The 2nd Berliner International Music Competition
for PIANISTS, STRINGS, SINGERS and WINDS

is open until June 15 (DEADLINE).

www.berlinercompetition.com

IAM Music Festival for Organists

Today, we received a leaflet about the Incorporated Association of Organists' Music Festival.  For further details, please visit the website:-

29 July - 2 August 2018

Peterborough

http://iao.org.uk/festival-invitation/

Dr Lenny Henry - PhD on Diversity in Screenwriting

Breaking News ...

Image from Wikipedia

Did you know that Lenny Henry has been awarded a PhD for his thesis on diversity in screenwriting?  We saw a tweet about him yesterday, and had to find out more! He studied at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Does the Coach have to be Black? The Sports Film, Screenwriting and Diversity: a Practice-Based Enquiry

• Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths
• Lenny Henry website

Napoleonic Era and beyond - Military and Social Tunes 1790-1840 in a vast online resource

We recently found a fascinating website for anyone interested in military and social tunes from the Georgian and early Victorian era. Extending from the time of the French Revolutionary Wars to the early years of Victoria's reign, the website profiles an absolutely enormous collection of tunes, some with "harmonies".  It began life in England, but is now in Canada, soon to be in the City of Toronto Archives.

Military / Social Tunes 1790-1840 : the John Buttrey Manuscript

State of play: David Hare and James Graham talk drama and politics

Keep up to date with what's hot in the West End.  Here's an interview by stage journalist Kate Kelly in the Observer.  Read about veteran playwright and the prolific young star! Both men give a fascinating insight into the relationship between contemporary politics and theatre!

 

(Click link below)

The Guardian David Hare & James Graham Interview

Search Tips for Your RCS Literature Search

At a recent workshop with BEdMus students, we explored different ways of fine-tuning your search techniques to retrieve better results in the catalogue and using Catalogue Plus.

Our catalogue offers access to all physical resources in the library (books, music, recordings etc) and also to individual e-book titles.  Meanwhile, Catalogue Plus offers access to all electronic resources - journal articles, databases, sound recordings, etc.
Here's a PowerPoint summary of what we talked about.

Extra free tip!

Don't forget the power of the synonym.  If one word doesn't retrieve what you expect, try another word that means the same thing. 

1. For example, nowadays we talk about "high ability" pupils, but earlier authors wrote about "gifted children".  Or prodigies! 
2. Similarly, sometimes you can get better results with a different version of the word.  If you want to write about Smetana or Sibelius as part of the late Romantic nationalist movement, searching for "nationalist music" may yield different results to when you search on Nationalism, or try Nationalism AND Music.

Women Creating Scotland: a blog and a conference

Here's something many of our readers will be interested in.  Take a look at the blog, visit the call for papers for the Creating for Change Conference 2018, and see if there's anything we could contribute from RCS!

• https://womencreatingscotland.wordpress.com/
• https://womencreatingscotland.wordpress.com/creating-for-change-conference-2018/ 

And, along the lines of "if you liked this, maybe you'll like that ...", have you visited the Dangerous Women Project? Take a look, here:-  

• http://dangerouswomenproject.org/

The May Queen by Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh (Jean-Pierre Dalbéra from Paris, France)

The Library Blog - a Changing Role?

In the early days of our blog, we highlighted things directly coming up in courses or concerts. A Beethoven concerto? We posted links to useful material about Beethoven.  A concert series? We found links to the artistes taking part.  And so on.  But as time went by, it was obvious that people would be searching for that kind of info themselves.

We still post information that will help our students for particular assignments - eg, how to search our online resources. How to conduct a literature search, or how to cite references in your essay.  What goes in a bibliography.  New material for a particular course - such as the Dalcroze material we bought in recently.  And reminders about things that we've mentioned before, if appropriate!

Sometimes we also flag up events, external courses or funding opportunities.  If we're sent a bundle of leaflets, then we may find the hyperlink and mention it online.  Or we may flag up new publications, or things that will appeal to a wide cross-section of our readers, or initiatives and projects of library-related interest.

Knowing that more people use Twitter than visit library blogs, we tend to post links to the blog, via Twitter.  We also share our blogposts with teaching colleagues. If they think the info relevant, then hopefully they share it with students that they teach.  Whilst Moodle and the Portal have vital information for our students, we like to think that our blog has a complementary role, and also of course, it can reach out to a wider range of people, not just staff and students.

So in our opinion, the library blog is not dead.  We have our own niche.  We're glad you found us - do call again!