Whittaker's pics

Whilst in Cardiff, 'Whittaker' visited Ty Cerdd, the Welsh music information centre, in the Wales Millenium Centre.  (Did you expect holiday snaps?  Oh, fie!)

And of course, collected one of 14 Excellence Awards on behalf of the Whittaker Library - all very exciting!  Here's a quick picture to tide us over until we have the certificate framed and displayed.
Returning to the reality of daily life in the Whittaker Library at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Whittaker discovered that inanimate objects can now speak.  The plants had 'I am not thirsty' notes attached, and one of the books had decided that retirement was long overdue.  It's nowhere near 67 yet, but it really looks past its best, so we can understand its self-promotion to the 'Library in the sky'.


If you're curious what Karen was talking about, down in Cardiff,  do take a look at her powerpoint presentation on Crowdsourcing the Celtic Bard.  Not content with her researches into the Scotish Minstrel (sic!), she now knows a fair bit about his Welsh cousins ...


Scottish minstrels and Welsh bards - 'Whittaker' went to Cardiff

Scottish minstrels and Welsh bards

'Whittaker' (Oh, okay - Karen McAulay) has just returned from Cardiff where UK and Irish music librarians held the IAML(UK and Ireland) Annual Study Weekend this year.

Edward Jones's collection

Having done a PhD on Scottish song-collecting c.1760-1888, it came as a bit of a surprise to find myself writing a paper on Welsh bards.  (Not just collecting the repertoire, but the bards themselves.  Oral repertoire is that much harder to pin down, as we all know.)  Scroll down to find the link to my Diigo Welsh music favourites.  Social bookmarking is the way to go, in this Web 2.0 age.  I love it.  I add relevant tags and pull things together into lists that I can share - it's a brilliant idea.

Diigo list - Welsh music links

As promised to the delegates - and IAML (UK and Ireland) members who weren't able to attend - here's the link to my PowerPoint. 


NB   I'm afraid there is no written 'script', but I hope to write up my talk for publication in Brio in due course.

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.

Crowdsourcing the Celtic Bard

For a forthcoming conference paper, "Whittaker" has undertaken to talk about Scottish and Welsh  songbooks.  Welsh?  Now, there's a new venture!  

A Tiki-Toki timeline keeps track of new Welsh discoveries: 21 titles so far. Next problem - getting hold of titlepages/ prefaces!

Tiki-Toki is a brilliant way of organising historical facts.  Ask Music and Academic Services Librarian Karen McAulay to tell you more about it.

George Ewart Evans - oral history at the British Library Sound Archive

RSAMD staff and students have access to the British Library Sound Archive via the British Library's Archival Sound Recordings website http://sounds.bl.uk/. Just one of the interesting collections at the Sound Archive is the George Ewart Evans oral history collection, and the BL is working on adding these recordings to the Archival Sound Recordings website . Find out more about it here. Read the Sound Archive's description of the collection:-

Around 200 recordings of interviews and songs made by George Ewart Evans, with about 170 interviewees, between 1956 and 1977. Also includes a small number of recordings by John Ridguard, Ginette Dunn and an unidentified male interviewer, with some self-recorded audio-letters to George Ewart Evans by Charles Kindred. Most recordings made in Suffolk, but a number in Wales, Ireland and Scotland. Principal subjects are rural life and agricultural work in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, folk beliefs about animals, medicine and witchcraft, folk and popular songs, entertainment and education in rural communities (with some material on domestic service, transport and mining).

Whittaker Live will alert patrons when the recordings become available online via the Archival Sound website: http://sounds.bl.uk/.