Alain Badiou - The Century (required reading)

 It's a must! - Alain Badiou's The Century

Christina Guillaumier asked the Whittaker Library to buy this book as required reading for her 3rd year BMus class (Music in History 3 Russian Modernism course).  It will be useful for a forthcoming essay.

It's here, and it'll be living in the Library until the beginning of February.  Don't all rush at once ...!

We've ordered another 'How to Write a Lot'

Oh, they're dead keen, our scholarly community!  So many have reserved my recommendation that we've ordered another copy of Paul Silvia's How to Write a Lot!

 It's conversational.  It's conveniently-sized for reading on the Subway.  It'll give you a boot up the backside if you need a bit of "encouragement" to get you sitting down at the keyboard to write up that project.  What's not to like about it?!  Come and tell me that you've started writing.  All librarians love to hear that their recommendations hit the mark.

More details...

Scottish Storytelling Centre - Courses coming up

Latest programme - Spring 2013  (The Scottish Storytelling Centre is in Edinburgh.)

Music Librarian Cataloguing Nerd

I got ridiculously excited about this - the Library of Congress classification schedules as a PDF, online!  Very useful indeed.

Music and Music books  (M, ML, MT)

Happy St Andrew's Day

Scottish songs, anyone?  Or how about some Scottish plays? Scottish culture in general?

Whittaker Library - the one-stop-shop for all your Scottish information requirements!

SoundEffects, a new open-source electronic journal from Aarhus

'Whittaker' was alerted to this new electronic journal by a blogpost from Bibliolore.

SoundEffects was launched by Aarhus University in 2011. It is interdisciplinary, open-source and peer-reviewed.  It appears to be something you just sign up to, for free.  Very much worth a look! 

http://www.soundeffects.dk/index

 

Advent Calendar

What? I only get one chocolate?

From the Norwegian Institute of Recorded Sound - click here.  They warn us that these are old, archival recordings ... so, don't be surprised!

Or you could try the Penguin Books advent calendar - here.

Church musicians - Kevin Mayhew has an advent calendar, too.

Classic FM's advent calendar

Articles on Theatre Practice

Theatre Research International

Calling all theatrical researchers!  (Maybe we should rephrase that ...?)

'Whittaker' received an invite to a free trial for Theatre Research International.  Generous though this is, we do already subscribe.  Have you used it?

From the Theatre Research International website:-

"Published for the International Federation for Theatre Research

Theatre Research International publishes articles on theatre practices in their social, cultural, and historical contexts, their relationship to other media of representation, and to other fields of inquiry. The journal seeks to reflect the evolving diversity of critical idioms prevalent in the scholarship of differing world contexts."

Click here (the link will work for anyone with an institutional subscription - remember to login if you're off-site). 

Past and Present Performance Practitioners

Routledge Performance Archive Trial

"The Routledge Performance Archive is a developing resource produced in partnership with Digital Theatre, providing unique access to an unprecedented range of audio-visual material from past and present practitioners of performance.

This ground-breaking and constantly growing online collection delivers essential resources direct to the classroom, lecture theatre and library.

The video material spans more than fifty years of documented work direct from renowned practitioners and specialists, and ranges across the entire spectrum of theatre topics."

Our proactive Drama and Dance Librarian has organised a free trial of Routledge Performance Archive, until 22 December 2012.  Royal Conservatoire Staff and Students can request the login details from our Library Staff.  

Let us know what you think of this resource! 

Visit http://www.routledgeperformancearchive.com/ to gain online access.

If you have any problems, comments or suggestions please do not hesitate to contact Alan Jones.

Writing and productivity

Interesting blogpost from the London School of Economics - it's sure to be useful to everyone involved in research.

30 tips for successful academic research and writing

By the way, I’m whizzing through Da Silvia’s How to Write A Lot – and I’ve written half an article in my spare time since the weekend, to prove its worth.   Recommended.  I'll review it when I've finished it.

• Amazon link

Un-making things: clothing in the 18th century

Here's an interesting post about making clothes in the 18th century.  It's on a blog called Un-making things, and it's from the Royal College of Art

The posting about 18th century clothes is called, CLOTHING CONSTRUCTION, CONFIDENTIALITY AND THE BODY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY - here's the direct link to the posting.

National Review of Live Art Archive

INTO THE FUTURE

The National Review of Live Art Festival ran from 1986-2010.  This link takes you to the audio-visual archive of live art performances and installations.  It's now based at the University of Bristol.  Click here for more info ...

Recommended to the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland research community by our Research Lecturer, Dr Anna Birch.

Costume Inspiration

Whittaker's friends at Nottingham-based firm Sewing Online have suggested a Pinterest site that might interest our costume designers. 

Here it is - Costume Inspiration, in all its multicoloured glory.  Enjoy!

(Do follow @Sewing_Online on Twitter if you're a textile enthusiast!)

Source: ebay.com via The World on Pinterest

Getting it Loud in Libraries - sound is turned off

Since 2005, there has been a BRILLIANT (no exaggeration) initiative bringing pop music to young people in public libraries around Britain.  It won awards, and rightly so.

Gigs were arranged, and teens/young adults flocked to hear them.  A disenfranchised group discovered that libraries were cool, and great places to borrow CDs and sheet music.

Now Lancashire Libraries has cut the funding.  Shame!  Read more ...

Bibliolore blogs about Lloyd Miller and Oriental Jazz

Staff and students on our Jazz degree course might find this blogpost interesting:-

Lloyd Miller and Oriental Jazz

Get Creative - a BUFVC film course

Get Creative

Raising awareness of moving image & sound content in your institution

Friday 7 December 2012, 10am – 3pm
The Geological Society, Piccadilly, London

 

As advertised on the BUFVC (British Universities Film and Video Council ... 

 

• Do you promote the use of moving image and sound within your institution?
• Do you find it difficult to engage students and lecturers to use audiovisual content?
• Are your students concerned about how to reference audiovisual content in their work?

http://bufvc.ac.uk/events/getcreative

Composer for the Violin, Henri Vieuxtemps

Just been invited to a virtual exhibition.  The invitation explains itself:-

[You are invited to] "our virtual exhibition on the life and works of Henry Vieuxtemps (1820-1881).  The Music Department of the Royal Library of Belgium holds the largest collection of scores by the famous 19^th century Belgian violinist and composer.  The exhibition gives a chronological survey of his career and features numerous unpublished documents including autograph scores, letters and illustrations. Available languages: French and Dutch." 

Visit it here.
- - - - -

Contact details:-

Bibliothèque royale de Belgique - Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België
Section de la Musique - Muziekafdeling
Boulevard de l'Empereur 4 - Keizerslaan 4
B-1000 Bruxelles - Brussel
Belgique - België
T. +32-(0)2-519.56.63
F. +32-(0)2-519.57.60

The forests whence instruments are made

Earlier this year, I blogged about Otis A. Tomas and The Fiddletree - his book documenting the making of a quartet of instruments from an old Cape Breton maple tree.  (I did a Storify page about it, too - it really caught my interest, as you can tell.)

• Whittaker Live blogpost
• Storify about creativity

You might guess that when a colleague told me about a quartet of instruments made from an Edinburgh sycamore out of Sir Conan Doyle's childhood garden (aptly named the 'Sherlock Quartet'), I simply had to know more.  Otis might be in Cape Breton, but Steve Burnett is, comparatively speaking, in our own back garden!

There was a 'Concert for Trees' in Edinburgh's Usher Hall last year to celebrate the United Nations International Year of Forests - read more here. (This is a posting on the Sherlock Holmes Society of London website.)

Of course, what you'll really want to know is, who made these instruments.  The luthier is Steve Burnett of Edinburgh.  He makes his instruments along the traditional lines, and using the traditional methods of the old masters.  Here's his website:-

http://www.burnettviolins.co.uk/

At the bottom of his homepage, you'll find an MP3 recording of Burnett talking about the Sherlock project.  Worth a look!

Postscript.  I have just learned of an interesting BBC news item about choosing the best wood for a Stradivarius. Read on!  (BBC News 14 April 2013).

Costume-Making

For costume designers

Sometimes 'Whittaker' feels guilty that he doesn't find enough useful content for our technical students, so it's nice to be able to share this costume-making website.

The Greater Bay Area Costumers Guild is based in San Francisco Bay, but there are useful links on their website that might be of interest to our Scottish students of costumery.  Why not take a look?

http://www.gbacg.org/

My thanks to Nottingham-based Sewing Online for this suggestion.  (Tweet them @Sewing_Online - they're very helpful.)

Race and Racism in Today's Theatre

There was an interesting theatre review in Times Higher Education magazine at the beginning of November.  It's thought-provoking, so you might like to read it.  Here's the link:-

• THE 1st November 2012, pp.50-51, 'It ain't half Shakespeare, Mum', by Peter J. Smith

(It's a review of Red Velvet, by Lolita Chakrabarti, and is on at Tricycle Theatre London until this Saturday, 24 November.  Our Drama and Dance Librarian will be ordering the playscript, to add to our collection.)