Digital Libraries for Musicology Workshop

First call for papers:-

ACM/IEEE Digital Libraries conference 2014

E Books R Us

"Where are the e-books?"

We have thousands of real books and music scores, but our catalogue also lists our e-books.  There's always a hyperlink for our registered students and staff members to access the electronic item.

If you get as far as the catalogue, and something is identified as an e-book, just click on the link.  If you're uncertain how to proceed, just ask us. (It's digital - you won't find it on the shelves!)

Whittaker Library Catalogue

Digital innovation in the Arts - read Guardian Culture Professionals Network article

If you sign up to Guardian Culture Professionals Network, you'll get sight of lots of interesting and relevant stuff like this article by Rohan Gunatillake.

Of the news alerts that 'Whittaker' has signed up to, this is definitely one of the more useful news alerts for people involved in cultural and creative arts.

One-World Schoolhouse (Salman Khan)

Flipping the Classroom, and teaching via YouTube

One of the most exciting books Karen has read for a while, this is about Salman Khan's revolutionary new approach to education via online technology.  Reading it, you begin perhaps with a little scepticism - does this approach really work?  What about the pedagogy behind it?  But the figures speak for themselves - the Khan Academy gets results.

We've bought a copy for the Whittaker Library - click here!

Details here

Ways to use Twitter for educational purposes

Worth a look - here.

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.

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.

#BLGK - Whittaker is at the Growing Knowledge exhibition at the British Library

Multi-Tasking as ever, 'Whittaker' hits London running - en route to an RMA Council Meeting, what better way to spend a birthday than to visit the Growing Knowledge Exhibition?  (It's been on Whittaker's wish-list for some months but 'he' doesn't visit London very often ...)

25 different digital tools to try - better get started!

• UK Web Archive - fantastic. (I searched 'Gaelic' with the Education and Research filter.  Masses of stuff.)
• British Library Microsoft Audio Search : turning speech into text (you have to be interested in the sample data for this demo to be much use, to be honest!)
• British Library Video Server - live content from BBC since May 2011.  (I confess, I searched for Kate Middleton.  I got results!)
• NYPL Map Rectification (rectify old maps in light of new knowledge. Fascinating. I found a map of Scotland dating from 1701- but couldn't view it in minute detail, which I'd have liked to have done.  Mull was there - but that was about as much as I could see!)
• Hmmm - Semantic Web technology.  I need a definition!
• Data.gov.uk - now this is interesting. You'd be astonished what you can learn about the running of our country (the UK, that is, not just Scotland ....)  2 minutes to find a whole load of meetings about copyright legislation, for example.
• London Lives (1690-1800) - 'access to 240,000 records from eight archives.  Names, places, occupations and dates ...'  Truly mind-boggling in scope.

Digital innovation: start in schools, says Murdoch

Rupert Murdoch says digital innovation needs to start in schools. Quite right!, we say. Read the story as reported by Orange News today.