Oliver Knussen's birthday

Where the Wild Things Are - Knussen is 60

Image from Composition Today

website, with thanks

The BBC Symphony Orchestra tweets that Oliver Knussen is 60 today!

"We celebrate with Total Immersion weekend 3-4 November 2012"

• Knussen in the Whittaker Library: check our catalogue!
• Glyndebourne Archive - see video clips and read more about Knussen's dramatic works
• Take a look at the Deutsche Grammophon recording of Where the Wild Things are

Where does it hurt? Performing Arts Medicine

A free online resource, drawn to our attention by Bibliolore -

Bibliography of Performing Arts Medicine

'Dedicated to the health of performing artists'

Many of Whittaker's followers are practising musicians, actors and dancers, and our books on injuries are often consulted!  This free online bibliography could be invaluable for practitioners and their teachers.

Mandela Trilogy - Cape Town Opera

A new opera about Nelson Mandela.

"Mandela Trilogy is Cape Town Opera’s musical tribute to the extraordinary life of Nelson Mandela, written by Michael Williams with music by Allan Stephenson, Mike Campbell and Peter Louis van Dijk."

• Cape Town Opera website;
• Article in The Guardian;
• Wales - Millenium Centre, 20-21 June 2012.

But can I read your eBOOK on my KINDLE?

Can you read an eBook on a Kindle?

Postgraduate librarianship student Hannah Saks works as a library assistant at the Whittaker Library at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.  We've been discussing a Cambridge eBook trial, and I asked if these eBooks could be read on a Kindle, since she's a proud owner of one.  Hannah explains the eBook/Kindle conundrum like this:-

.

Q: Can you read a Cambridge University Press eBook on a Kindle?

"Technically yes, they can be read on a Kindle. But it’s a bit tricky! The books are in PDF format (and each chapter is an individual file). PDFs can be read on the Kindle but the user has to download them to their computer and then either email them to their Kindle account (when you get a Kindle you are assigned a Kindle email address for sending documents to it, e.g. Joe.blogs@kindle.com) or connect the Kindle to the computer and transfer the files onto it."

Hannah says she's ...,

"... not a big fan of reading PDFs on the Kindle- as they’re essentially a static image you can’t do any of the zooming or enlarging of fonts that you can do with ‘regular’ ebooks - and there is no way to skip to different sections of the book from the table of contents (although I suppose by providing each chapter as a different file Cambridge have made that a little easier). You might not be able to search the text of the document, either. Some PDFs look ok on the Kindle and some look pretty terrible- it all depends on how they were originally formatted."

Q: So the format of a genuine Kindle book (like you’d get from Amazon) is not the same as an ebook?

"Aha- now we’re getting into the truly complicated world of the ebook business! The Kindle book is an ebook, but it comes in its very own special format (.azw). In their infinite wisdom (and I assume inability to just get along), all ebook reader makers decided to make their own format for their readers and so we have .azw, .mobi (which confusingly is essentially the same as .azw), .epub and a lot of others (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_e-book_formats). In this way each ebook reader manufacturer can sneakily try and force customers to only buy ebooks from their preferred retailer. However, there is free software out there that can convert the file formats. I use Calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/) and find it quite easy to use."

Hannah can be contacted via library@rcs.ac.uk 

myShakespeare

myShakespeare

Shakespeare interpreted online for the digital age.  See what you think:-

http://myshakespeare.worldshakespearefestival.org.uk/

eBooks trial

Free trial - Cambridge eBooks

Image courtesy rephrazer.blogspot.com

The Whittaker Library at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland has full access to over 11,000 Cambridge University Press eBooks until 9 July 2012.  This is a trial that has been brokered by SHEDL (Scotland's highly-esteemed digital resources collective for Higher Education libraries).  Continued access will depend on negotiations - so why not 'make hay while the sun shines', and enjoy the free trial?!


This means that until 9 July, our staff and students now have full online access to :-

• 95 eBooks from Cambridge in Drama and Theatre, 
• 93 eBooks from Cambridge in Film and Media, and
• 228 eBooks from Cambridge in Music.

You may start reading eBooks in your subject area of interest straight away - simply click on the links below: -

• o        Drama and Theater [View All ]
• §        American Theater
• §        British Theater
• §        Classical Theater
• §        Drama and Theater: general interest
• §        European Theater 

- - o O o - -

• o        Film, media, mass communication [View All ]
• §        Communications
• §        Creative Writing
• §        Film
• §        Journalism
• §        Media, mass communication

- - o O o - -

• o        Music [View All ]
• §        Eighteenth-century music
• §        Ethnomusicology
• §        Medieval and Renaissance music
• §        Music criticism
• §        Music performance
• §        Music: general interest
• §        Nineteenth-century music
• §        Opera
• §        Seventeenth-century music
• §        Twentieth-century and contemporary music

The Musical Library

Endless cataloguing?

'Whittaker' is cataloguing three volumes of a four-volume Victorian vocal series.  The contents are endless.  Seriously, endless ...  I'd be losing the will to live, if it wasn't for the thought that there are interesting things in here, and someone might appreciate them.  So it's my duty to let you know we have it - and what's inside.

Best way to take notes for your PhD?

After a PhD chat on Twitter (#PhDchat), Australian research-support expert The Thesis Whisperer wrote a Storify story on this topic.  Read it here.

Lucy's Letters from America

Memorable Breakfasts

We nearly missed Lucy's last letter from New Orleans, but it would be a shame if you didn't read about her final gastronomic breakfast, so why not catch up now?  (Grab a Subway before you start reading, to stave off the inevitable gastro-envy!)

Charles Rosen: Freedom and the Arts

A compilation of Rosen's writings - favourably reviewed in THE (Times Higher Education, 31 May 2012).

The Whittaker Library at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland has several of Rosen's books in stock, but we have just bought his latest book.  Find out more here.

In a hurry to get your own?

Loud, loud, LOUD MUSIC

Music loud?  Fingers in your ears? 

Heed this or you might need hearing-aids in them later! 

Action on Hearing Loss has been running a campaign to raise awareness of the damage that loud music can do to our hearing.

Here's their Storify page about the campaign.

(Do you look forward to plugging your iPod into your hearing aids ..?  Turn the volume down!)

Composer James Macmillan - forthcoming Scottish performances

James Macmillan Scottish performances

Boosey & Hawkes' composer pages inform you about some of today's biggest names.

This month in Edinburgh, you can hear James Macmillan's A Child's Prayer, at St Cuthbert's Church (16.6.2012)

And in August you can hear a world premiere of his Since it was the Day of Preparation ..., in Greyfriar's Church (22.8.2012).

'An agreeable mixture of Italian, English and Scots'

Have you ever seen an 18th century history of music? 

No, we don't mean a history of 18th century music, but a book written in that era about the history of music to date.

The Whittaker Library is tidying up our rare books.  We came across Charles Burney's 4-volume A General History of Music (1776  -1789).

Charles Burney (Vol.4), on Arne

In Vol.4, Burney wrote of Arne's music that,

The general melody of our countryman, if analized, would perhaps appear to be neither Italian nor English, but an agreeable mixture of Italian, English, and Scots.  Many of his ballads, indeed, were professed imitations of the Scots style; but in his other songs he frequently dropped into it, perhaps, without design.'

To find out more of our forefathers' views, in their own olde-worlde spelling, you can find this book digitised in Google Books - or visit the Library to turn the pages for yourself and get that special 'old book' experience in tangible form!

Signed Copies? Look after them!

Abe Books have just sent their monthly email about the 'most valuable' book they've sold recently.  A signed copy of  Where the Wild Things are just sold for £16,200!  Read about it here.  (Thanks to library assistant Hannah Saks for this fascinating snippet.)

If you've kept any signed copies, do keep an eye on their value before your Mum sends them to the charity shop ...

Introducing our talented staff: Lucinda Geoghegan

Not only does Lucinda Geoghegan teach at the Junior Conservatoire, but her music education books are also on the reading-lists for senior Royal Conservatoire of Scotland students.*  She is also Education Consultant for the National Youth Choir of Scotland and collaborates with the Kodály Institute.

*  The Whittaker Library is currently checking reading-lists for the new curriculum, which starts next session.

Ways to use Twitter for educational purposes

Worth a look - here.

RSAMD Alumnus K. James Peace

Always interested to hear what our alumni are doing, 'Whittaker' has just been advised that K. James Peace (now in Wiesbaden), has posted a flute piece on YouTube:-

The Waterfall, op.3 (click here to view)

This piece was written whilst the composer was a student at RSAMD, in the old Athenaeum building at Nelson Mandela Place, Glasgow.  Our thanks to Mr Peace for keeping in touch!

InfoSMART - case study, Glasgow School of Art

InfosmART

Embracing technology to assist with information literacy in an arts student context - Glasgow School of Art's InfosmART has won awards for its innovative approach.

RSCtv hosted a live presentation (webinar) last week.  Click the link below, to watch it.

RSCtv Watch Again - archive of broadcast details & support notes30th May 2012 - Case Study: InfosmART: Research Skills for Art and Design Students - Glasgow School of Art Library - watch a recording of this session.

Thesis Whisperer offers research support

'Whittaker' would like to share with research students and colleagues, the fact that our friend the Thesis Whisperer now has a new, dedicated domain name.  

If you've bookmarked Thesis Whisperer in the past, please update your bookmark to this:-

http://thesiswhisperer.com/

There, that was painless, wasn't it?  Now you won't miss any of TW's valuable support and advice.  'Whittaker' has written blogposts for TW in the past; this reminds him to put pen to paper (digit to desktop) and submit another offering!

Jubilee

The day of the Queen's Jubilee

Was wet, to a chilly degree 

But the Monarch just smiled, 

Her subjects went wild,

And we Scots saw it all on TV.

c. KEMcAulay 

3.6.2012

Image from The Telegraph newspaper's blog

We have a small exhibition of Coronation and Jubilee-related material in the Whittaker Library - do come and see.  (If you speak to our Archive Officer, there's more ...!)

And we've compiled some Jubilee-related search-findings from the library catalogue: take a look at this Diigo Jubilee list (social bookmarking) list.

• Video: Diamond Jubilee Pageant's Musical Finale - featuring our opposite numbers down in London -  the very wet Royal College of Music Chamber Choir!  (From BBC website).
• BBC Diamond Jubilee website is http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17500000