Whittaker alights upon new Performing Arts Websites

A lot can happen in a week.  And while the world moves on, and the global headlines scream for our attention, Whittaker quietly continues to find useful performing arts websites for our artistic community.

This week we've shared links on:-

Unsung composers, Strathspeys, Bagpipes in Northumbria and Oman, Operatic texts and Operatic Enfants, String Pedagogy, Dating Victorian Music, Digital Ballet, and SoundCloud from the Scottish Poetry Library

All at http://whittakerlive.blogspot.com

The Unstoppable Whittaker Live - Cultural Links for Creatives

Students are leaving for well-deserved holidays and summer activities, but the Whittaker Library continues to offer useful links to events, forums, networking opportunities and much more.

This week, we've offered a vast array of information - bookmark our blog homepage at   http://whittakerlive.blogspot.com and see if any of these interest you.  But be quick! Some links are more time-sensitive than others!
 

Guardian Culture Professionals

Supporting your Creativity

Peter Maxwell Davies

Library Catalogue Lists  - and New Acquisitions

Strathclyde Youth Jazz

Oxford Bibliographies – a database trial

Practice DOES Make Perfect

The Emigrant’s Book Sale

The Profile of Women Composers

Networking on the Conference Circuit

Some Victorian Scottish Musicians

Writing about Social Media in Libraries - Whittaker seeks Feedback, please!

Whittaker Live has been blogging about the performing arts for over a decade.  This Wednesday, I'm going to Birmingham, where I'll be talking to my peers about social media in academic music libraries.  I'd really appreciate your help!  What I need is feedback: when you visit Whittaker Live, do you get what you expected?  Are you likely to return to the site?  Are you favourably impressed, or disappointed?  (If disappointed, what did you hope to find?)

I do also blog in a private capacity.  True Imaginary Friends has been my blog whilst preparing my first scholarly book for publication.  (The book was released in March 2013, so hopefully I'll soon be able to read some reviews.)  I also set up my professional development blog called Airs and Graces CPD, as part of the 23 Things project, though I only write on it occasionally now.

As well as blogging, I tweet as @WhittakerLib and as myself @Karenmca.  During the week, I try to maintain a professional persona in either capacity.  This idea of different personae interests me, and I'm curious what other folk do.  I find I use Twitter in several quite distinct ways - this is another intriguing angle, and I wonder if anyone else has categorised their tweets like this.

I use Diigo for social bookmarking, and sometimes share my lists.  I also occasionally use Storify.  I've made a deliberate policy not to use Facebook except for family and a very few close friends, and I'm a limited user of LinkedIn.

If you're a librarian or a library user - any kind of library - I'd love to hear from you.  If you're part of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland community, thank you for following, and for letting me share 'your' blog with other interested parties!

What goes around, comes around

Choral training: Whittaker and Kodaly

From Glasgow University website

Image from Classical.net

It's well-known that the Whittaker Library is named after one of our early Principals, William Gillies Whittaker.  (That explains the name of this blog, too: Whittaker Live.)

How nice to think that after all these years, Whittaker's editions of folk song sight singing books should again be requested for choral use.  Well done, Professor Whittaker!  (We've actually got a lot of his editions, not just in the choral collection.  Take a look here ...)

Whittaker's choral training books are being used alongside the better-known Zoltan Kodaly materials. 

• We've got a lot of Kodaly choral training materials, too!
• Books on the Kodaly method (as opposed to the choral training materials) : click here.
• British Kodaly Academy: http://www.britishkodalyacademy.org/
• http://www.kodaly-method.com/

Why Whittaker Blogs

‘Whittaker’ had a few days of leave carried over from last year’s entitlement, so he’s taking a long weekend. But will ‘his’ readers survive without him? For anyone chancing upon this page, here are a few random but carefully-weighed comments.

So, why does Whittaker blog? To borrow Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s words, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”:-

• This blog is intended to inform staff and students of the performing arts.
• It aims to flag up useful and interesting websites, forthcoming events, new or rare library acquisitions, services offered by the library, and other sources of information, study, research or career support.
• Thus, this week it has offered readers details of a research symposium; old Scottish musicians and song collectors William Motherwell, William Tytler and Alexander Campbell; an arts and humanities streaming workshop; a Steve Reich 75th birthday competition; British Library Postgraduate Open Days; thoughts about a research query on the Lordship of the Isles; and the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival. Nothing if not varied!
• Our staff and students are musicians, actors, community arts animateurs, stage designers, film and television directors, jazz improvisers and ballet dancers, to name but a few.
• ‘Whittaker’ keeps a weather eye for interesting trends coming up on the Twitter scene, but ‘he’ will not be found on Facebook, as ‘he’ doesn’t care to discuss his private life on social media websites.  This is a professional blog.
• Meanwhile, the combination of upcoming cultural and information trends, with intriguing historical facts pertaining to old Scottish song collections, can be attributed to Whittaker’s own dual-qualified background in library & information science and musicology. He does try to seek out drama, film/television and ballet snippets, but depends on his informants to feed him interesting titbits in these spheres.
• The author of Whittaker does also occasionally contribute to other blogs such as TheThesisWhisperer, lurks around Twitter’s #PhDchat on Wednesday evenings, and authors the Jobs.ac.uk Music blog in 'his' spare time, to keep in touch with the world of research and offer support to those following him along the doctoral path.

If you like what you read here, please do comment. Any suggestions are always considered with an open mind.

Why do scholars blog?

Inger Mewburn, aka The Thesis Whisperer, runs a very successful research blog. (Do visit http://thethesiswhisperer.wordpress.com/.)  However, Inger also, from time to time, blogs elsewhere.  Today, 2nd September, I caught up with her on the Networked Researcher blog: her post is called Is there a new digital divide brewing?  It makes interesting reading.


"Whittaker" started asking "himself" why he maintains WhittakerLive.  Actually, it's all there on the sidebar:-

WhittakerLive has posted friendly and informative postings since 1999. We showcase performing arts websites, and higher education links that will interest our staff and student performers.


Current awareness: useful weblinks, publications, recordings, events etc. Also postings on learning skills, research support  and information literacy.

It's a wide remit, which is why the postings might seem rather random at first glance.  However, this week's postings are pretty representative of what we aim to achieve.  So, what have we got?  Obituaries for Ray Fisher (Scottish ballad singer) and Alasdair Gillies (bagpiper extraordinaire).  An 'on this day' posting for Joseph Ritson, an influential 18th century antiquarian. The name-change from RSAMD to Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.  Digitised Beethoven.  The first call for papers, for Musica Scotica 2012 conference.

Now, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland is not just about Scottish music, or indeed about classical music or music history.  It's drama, dance, film and TV, performance and improvisation ... so please do suggest newsworthy items or websites that are of potential use to staff and students working in these areas!

NOT Roger Whittaker Live!

It's a meercat kind of situation. 

'Whittaker' has just realised that if you Google WhittakerLive, or indeed Whittaker Live, you're likely to find a load of postings for Roger Whittaker Live.

So, to make it perfectly plain, Whittaker Live (as in Whittaker Library of RSAMD, shortly to become the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) is a blog about the performing arts and higher education as it relates to the same.

Roger Whittaker the Anglo-Kenyan singer-songwriter was born in 1936, and has released a number of live albums:-

• Roger Whittaker Live in Berlin
• Greatest Hits Live
• Live in Concert
• Live (1994)
• The Last Farewell (Live) 2001

... but despite BEING alive, is unconnected with Whittaker Live the performing arts blog.  The eponymous William Whittaker is deceased, but his memory lives on in the Whittaker Library.