The Engaging Researcher

The Engaging Researcher

booklet by Vitae

Subtitled, 'Inspiring people to engage with your research', what could be more relevant to the committed researcher?

Followers of Whittaker Live may remember the original call for stories to go into this booklet, back in Spring 2010.

Always well-written, succinct, and the size you can read in a coffee-break - copies available from Karen for research staff and doctoral students at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. 

If you can't be dragged away from your keyboard, visit www.vitae.ac.uk/researcherbooklets for a cyber version.

(But Karen recommends the coffee-break way!  Breaks are good for you, and how else can you engage with your public?)

Research Information Network - new report

New report, Information Handling in Collaborative Research - find the printed report in Whittaker Library or read it online.  Here.

Warwick Folk Festival 26th-29th July 2012

This link offers tickets at 2011 prices.

National Libraries Day February 4th 2012 - Save the Date!

Follow this link (coming soon):- http://www.nationallibrariesday.org.uk/

"Whittaker" wants to celebrate.  What do you think?  Library cake, anyone? Other ideas for the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland's library?

In Mozart's words: new website makes Mozart's letters available online

In Mozart's words

In Mozart’s Words provides multilingual access to an annotated version of the voluminous correspondence of Mozart and his family - approximately 1,400 letters - that will progressively be made available online on this website. The website offers i) a univocal database of all references to people, places and musical works contained in the letters, facilitating the systematic search of all cited occurrences, and ii) access to background materials such as reviews, newspapers, documents, objects, paintings, engravings, and books as a corollary to the historical-critical annotations.

Credits:-

• Academic direction and notes: Cliff Eisen, King's College, London
• Mozart's works scores: Neue Mozart-Ausgabe Online Website 
• Full credits, translators etc - click here.

Pathways to the Profession: Scottish Dance Theatre Symposium

Pathways to the Profession Symposium

West Park, Dundee.  19th-20th January, 2012 

Royal Conservatoire Research Lecturer Anna Birch is Documentation Advisor for this industry changing Symposium!

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ln January 2012, Scottish Dance Theatre and partners host the Pathways to the Profession Symposium which will explore the issues inhibiting the inclusion of physically and sensory disabled people in the performing arts.

Website

Severe weather

The Met Office blog:- http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/what-to-do-in-severe-windy-weather/

Showcasing Digital Theatre Plus

"The best seat in the house is the one you're sitting in."

• The best of live theatre
• Documentaries
• Interviews

Take a look at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland's latest online subscription.  Actually, since the Digital Theatre Plus team are experts in "putting it across", let's see how they describe it themselves:-

" ... a team of theatre makers committed to using new media to enhance the theatre watching experience.  In partnership with some of the UK's leading theatre organisations ... put the audience at the heart of all their work ... 

"... pioneering a new way of capturing live performance on film. By using multi angle HD cameras they're able to pick up the intimacy of a play and the story that unfolds on stage and share it with audiences - wherever they are.


"hugely beneficial to tuning a younger audience into the excitement of theatre. By presenting plays online and complementing them with related documentaries and interviews, Digital Theatre and Digital Theatre Plus are offering access to people, places, productions and a new way of experiencing theatre.


"Creating a relationship with audiences is vital and as new technology moves further and further towards a culture of complete interaction theatre makers are able to push boundaries and explore a shared experience between performer and audience in both a real and virtual space.

http://www.digitaltheatreplus.com/home

Registered  Royal Conservatoire staff and students can contact the Whittaker Library for details of username and password.  Ask next time you're in, or email us using your Conservatoire email account.

GSA (Glasgow School of Art) Video Archive

GSA Video Archive  - 6,500 views since May 2011 launch!

• 84 videos of public lectures and events
• Wide variety - organised by The Glasgow Urban Lab, Architecture Friday Lectures, Fine Art Friday Events, Exhibitions talks and events, and more!
• Entire series of Architecture Friday Lectures from 2010-11
• Various Friday Event lectures dating from 2006-11
  The GSA Video Archive was launched in May 2011 - and is now available via the Glasgow School of Art website. Here's the link:-www.gsa.ac.uk/videoarchive.  It will also soon become available on GSA’s Vimeo account (over the next few months, with the help of Lyn McLaughlin), where you can browse by subject categories – using channels on Art, Architecture, Design, FoCI, Research, etc: http://vimeo.com/gsofa

'... including notable talks by architect Steven Holl, artist and kinetic sculptor Susumu Shingu, designer Ben Kelly, artist and GSA graduate Christine Borland, artist and GSA graduate Roddy Buchanan, Urban Lab lecturer Graeme Evans, artist Martha Rosler, and more! There are two talks each featuring our own Roger Wilson and Thomas Joshua Cooper, a fantastic research presentation by Alistair MacDonald, and two talks by recent UK Fullbright Distinguished Chair Ann Markusen.'

12 Days of Christmas, Advent 'Calendars' and Santa Claus

In the spirit of Christmas, I offer these links to all followers of Whittaker Live!

• Freebies from the RSNO
• Classic FM Advent Calendar
• Norwegian Institute of Recorded Sound (a tune a day)
• Glasgow’s 12 days of Christmas calendar- theatre ticket offers . Today (7th December) it's a 2 for 1 deal!

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'You'll lower my chances of winning!', my colleagues protest.  But they don't mind really!

Lost for words?

Where can you find the words to thousands of songs and poems?

A useful free database, The Lied, Art Song and Choral Texts Archive contains the words of thousands of songs. 

Take the Romantic Scottish poet, Allan Cunningham, for example.  (Well, today's his birthday, so it's a good day to focus on him!) 

Allan Cunningham (1784-1842) was a bit of a prankster, to be honest. He invented some Borders songs for Cromek's collection called Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song.  (He admitted this to close friends.)  And he was thought to have done the same for his own larger collection, Songs of Scotland, Ancient and Modern.  (This is a collection of poetry, not music.)  Plenty of composers have drawn upon his lyrics, all the same.  As you'll see in The Lied, Art Song and Choral Texts Archive.  Here's his page.

• Wikipedia entry on Allan Cunningham (born on this day, 7th December 1784)

Looking for Scottish verse? Allan Cunningham might not be quite what you're looking for, but you can find plenty of source-material at the Scottish Poetry Library.  Here's their catalogue.  Learn a poem, or set one to music. 

• If you're using a poem as lyrics, do remember to check if the poet is still in copyright.  Poets have feelings (and rights!), but they'll be flattered to be asked ...  

NB this post is one of Whittaker Live's 'On this day' series about Scotland's song history.

Showcasing SCRAN (Scotland's history at the click of a mouse)

Have you visited the Whittaker Library and Information Services website, at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland?


We offer much more than printed and audiovisual materials!  Staff and students of the Royal Conservatoire can access quality electronic resources through our website.  Our digital offerings include various useful databases.  Sometimes they're useful in more ways than you'd imagine.


Take SCRAN, for example.  Scottish materials of all sorts, including images, pages of old books and music, portraits ...

• BA in Scottish Music students might find useful source materials, or even images for back-projecting during a performance
• Costume and theatre designers will find masses of illustrations of fashions and every aspect of contemporary life in any historic period
• Surprise yourself - try an old cake recipe, or cook a Christmas pudding as your great-grandmother would have done!
• You can even pull out stuff on a particular theme, such as Christmas, or war.  A particularly poignant one is a photo of soldiers celebrating Christmas in the trenches, Western Front, during World War I. Here's part of the caption:-

This photograph shows a dozen men sitting in the mud in a trench celebrating Christmas. They have laid some white paper on a crate and set out some slices of cake, a tinned pudding, a packet of raisins and what looks like an orange. These may have been in a food parcel from home, shared by a group of friends.


The photograph's original caption reads, 'Tommy's Xmas on the West.' There is a poignancy about these men celebrating Christmas, the Christian festival for the birth of Christ and 'peace and goodwill to all men', while behind them there is a crude wooden cross over the grave of a dead soldier.

Direct access from within Royal Conservatoire premises.  Institutional access from outside.  (Identify us from a list then use your Royal Conservatoire staff or student ID and password.)

Images can be used educationally, but we're not permitted to put them on a publicly accessible website. So the Christmas pud is from Creative Commons, not Scran! 

Scottish Poetry Library - Poetry Issues

Latest issue is out now (December 2011)

"New Poetry Titles, including a stunning new translation from Simon Armitage, the 20th Century in Poetry, and Douglas Dunn’s new pamphlet
Recommended titles for Burns Night and Scots Weeks projects and queries ...
… and a brand new free Handbook to download on easy ways to approach discussing poetry."

Scottish Poetry Library homepage

Tales of Christmas Past

Are you in Edinburgh on 17th December?

3 pm at the Scottish Storytelling Centre

43-45 High Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1SR

"How was Christmas celebrated in days gone by? Time to reflect on the joy and good tidings Christmas can bring with storytellers Heather Yule and Janis Mackay. Yuletide tales from Scotland conjure up the Christmas spirit, in story, music and song. There is a rich and varied story culture in Scotland associated with the birth of Christ and the winter’s solstice, so come and join us, away from the commercial face of Christmas, to celebrate."

Engaging communities: Reflections on a creative Scotland

Engaging communities

The latest post by Andrew Dixon for Creative Scotland.

Audition for Olympic Ceremonies!

Dancers, Musical Theatre students ...look!

Stadium? Check.  Staff? Pending!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16024217

Still time to audition.  Worth following up?

Useful link (not just dancers!): Job Opportunities 2012

Beyond Macbeth: Shakespeare in Scottish collections

National Library of Scotland exhibition

Over 400 years, the National Library of Scotland and Edinburgh University Library have acquired world-class collections of plays by William Shakespeare. These shed light on the ways in which Shakespeare's works have been read, collected, adapted and circulated in the centuries since they first appeared in print.

Beyond Macbeth: Shakespeare in Scottish Collections, is the new exhibition running at NLS from 9 December to 29 April which looks at these collections through the lives and activities of those who helped to bring them together, from the Scottish poet William Drummond to the editor and critic John Dover Wilson. It asks what Shakespeare - valued and championed in so many different ways in the past - means in Scotland today.

See iconic Shakespearean treasures including a copy of the First Folio (the first collected edition), and some of the first published versions of his plays

 

E-portfolios at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

The Conservatoire made it into the JISC RSC Scotland* Newsfeed for its work with e-portfolios! The Interviewer talked to Aaron Shorr, Head of Keyboard and Collaborative Piano Studies, Andy Dougan, Lecturer in Digital Film and TV,  Silviya Mihaylova, Keyboard and Collaborative Piano Studies student, Alicia Shaw, Digital Film and TV student

 Read on ...

* JISC Regional Support Centre Scotland

Lasair Award - Irish Film and TV Network

Film and TV students! Look here - an award!

Be quick ...deadline extended.

Filmbase and TG4 have announced that the deadline for the Lasair award scheme has been extended until the 27th January 2012. Filmbase and TG4 are also organising an information session for filmmakers interested in applying to the Lasair short film award scheme. Lasair, now in its 5th round, is Filmbase and TG4’s scheme for supporting filmmakers to produce short films in the Irish language.

Full details here


Mention of the Irish language suggests that you might need to find Irish collaborators ...?

This will be added to Whittaker Live's Awards, Grants, Prizes page

Crowdsourcing the Celtic bard

Subsequent to my "appearance" at the IAML 2011 Conference in Dublin, I've been asked to speak at IAML (UK and Irl) Annual Study Weekend in 2012, and my talk will hopefully have a Welsh flavour. (Any jokers about Welsh rarebit can stop right there, thanks!)

I'd like to combine the Welsh song aspect with a social networking idea that I've been contemplating. I've put together a Tiki-Toki presentation to explain what I mean.

If there are any librarians or Celtic song scholars who think they might be able to help, or would like to join in, then the prime requirement is to be able to access some of the early Welsh songbooks that I'm interested in. I'm putting together a Mendeley list which I'll be happy to share in the next few days.

Many thanks - I look forward to hearing from you!
Dr Karen McAulay
Royal Conservatoire of Scotland