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e-codices -Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland [Fribourg, Switzerland] 2005- http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en (Accessed 25 June 2015) [Requires a web browser, and Internet connection. Mobile app requires an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch running iOS 7.0 or later. Pricing: free.]In January 2005 a pilot project to digitize 130 medieval manuscripts from the Abbey Library of St. Gall in Switzerland began. The program was an initiative of Prof. Dr. Christoph Flueler at the University of Fribourg with the intent to digitize medieval manuscripts and make them freely available online to scholars and researchers through the Codices electronici Sangalleses (CESG) website (henceforth, "e-codices").8 Ten years later, with funding from multiple sources and the support of the Rectors Conference of Swiss Universities, the project has become part of a national initiative for widespread digitization. Scholars now have free access to 1,363 fully digitized manuscripts as part of a virtual research library of bound manuscripts dating from the fourth century to early modernity made available by fifty-seven libraries, churches, and private collections in Switzerland and abroad.The breadth and quality of material digitized and available in e-codices is a rich resource for researchers investigating varied aspects of manuscript studies such as textual transmission and criticism, paleography, liturgy, musical notation, iconography, and source studies. Users can search the virtual library by institution and manuscript shelf number or by person name to find high resolution, digital images of complete manuscripts. Each item in the library includes at least one detailed, scholarly description and accompanying bibliography related to the manuscript object.For music scholars, the significance of the collections available in e-codices cannot be understated. The manuscripts from the Abbey Library of St. Gallen represent the largest set of digitized volumes-541 to date-and 92 of these feature musical notation. Within the digitized holdings are some of the most important primary source documents for early music notation. Digitized holdings include the Cantatorium of St. Gall 9, the earliest known complete manuscript with neume notation. Also online is Einsiedeln Stiftsbibliothek (Codex 121(1151)), which is the oldest complete extant neumed mass antiphonary and is a primary source for sequences by Notker Balbulus. Early modern additions to the virtual library include the Autographs of Jean Jacques Rousseau project featuring Rousseau's first handwritten edition of the Dictionnaire de musique.The design and functionality of the site by the Swiss-based IT company text & bytes GmbH is impressive. The company specializes in the digital humanities and in custom built web applications.10 In December 2014, e-codices Web Application 2.0 was made public, giving users a new search function, an improved viewer with seamless zoom, a user friendly metadata display, and improved PDF, print, and downloading functionality. The new application incorporates international standards for interoperability and adheres to the Text Encoding Initiative standards (specifically, TEI-P5) for electronic manuscript descriptions. In all, the v2.0 upgrade reflects the commitment of e-codices to meet the most current needs of digital scholarship and accessibility to resources.InterfaceThe home page of the site features a colorful banner cycling through manuscript images. More than a slideshow of beautiful illuminations, the twenty-one slides are linked pages for each of the e-codices subprojects providing collection overviews and project information.Below the banner, the page frame is separated into two columns. One column is a list of manuscript collections for the entire site. On the right, the smaller column contains news updates as manuscripts recently added, a quarterly newsletter, and press coverage for the site.Above the banner is a navigation ribbon with options for the user that remain visible on all pages of the site. …

For information regarding the scope of this column., consult the headnote in the September 2012 issue. The dates of access for each review of an online source indicate the dates during which the reviewer was evaluating the resource. All Web sites were last accessed to verify availability on 1 November 2012. Academic Charts Online: International Popular Music. [London]: Academic Rights Press, 2012--. http://academiccharts.com/ (Accessed August 2012). [Requires a Web browser and an Internet connection. Pricing: institutional subscription $2250 per year with unlimited simultaneous users; currently, subscriptions available for academic libraries only.] Until the launch of Academic Charts Online: International Popular Music (ACO) in June 2012, any project requiring the ability to extract and compare charting data for sound recording sales was a labor-intensive and often bleak prospect. Of course, Billboard data have long been available to some patrons via local subscriptions of print and microfilm editions and more recently electronically, including via the Billboard site and through Google Books, (1) while Cash Box holdings are more limited in libraries but now available online as well. (2) The Official Charts Company provides electronic access to a subset of British charting data via their Web site, (3) and dedicated scholars have compiled much charting data in books. (4) Users hoping to collect, compare, and analyze sales and charts data over time could certainly gather some of that information manually using such sources. but the introduction of ACO facilitates that work for the user, provides tools for analysis, and adds much more data than have traditionally been collectively available in library collections. ACO currently includes chart data from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Spain, Australia, and Mexico from a variety of sources authorized by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. (5) Coverage dates and chart types vary by location. For the U.S. and Canada, Billboard data represent all of the included information, with U.S. singles going back to 1956 and U.S. albums to 1985 (with eventual album backfill to 1955), and Canada going back to 1996. U.K. data come from Official Charts, beginning in 1952. Media Control provides German and Spanish data going back to 1977 and 2003, respectively. Australian data come from ARIA (back to 1988), and Mexican data from Nielsen Music Airplay (back to 1999). In each of these areas, coverage generally differs for singles charts, album charts, genre charts, and so on. New data arrive weekly, although one provider has a short embargo before the data appears in ACO with an average of only about a week's lag time for the majority of the content. These data are presented as a searchable database with tools to create analytics that allow the user to compare charting positions by artist, title (singles and albums), countries in which titles charted, label, and more. ACO personnel come from backgrounds in electronic publishing and databases, with additional experience in the music industry, so they approach this project with expertise and enthusiasm; for example, they started Classical Music Library as one of the pioneers of streaming music for libraries. An advisory board made up of librarians and academics helps guide the development of the product and supplements this expertise. Functionality AC0's approach to controlled vocabulary mirrors the predictive search mechanism in Google and, as such, will seem familiar to many users. When one begins a search, potential results display just below the search box; the user selects the desired search term from the controlled list to populate the search box. 11 no suggestions appear once a complete name or title is entered, there are no data for that search term. The predictive results will include a combination of possible results types. For instance, a search beginning with "Elliott" will suggest Missy Elliott, Carol Elliott, Elliott Smith, William Elliott Whitmore, and others as artist searches, as well as albums and singles by each of these artists. …

One of the foremost living American composers, Roger Reynolds (b. 1934), and his music are well known by those who follow the contemporary music scene in America. Critic and musicologist Kyle Gann noted that Reynolds was "the first composer since Ives from an experimentalist background to win the normally conservative Pulitzer Prize for music," (1) a paradox that points to one of the key facts of Reynolds's music. In a general sense, his music blends aspects of the European avant-garde and American experimental traditions; the influence of the former is apparent in Reynolds's text usage, spatialization, and theatrical elements, while that of the latter can be glimpsed in his innovative formal designs, expansion of serial techniques, editing procedures, and sophisticated use of electroacoustic technologies. Until recently, a moderate number of resources were available to scholars and artists interested in Reynolds's music, including scores published by Edition Peters and numerous commercial recordings; (2) the composer's Web site; several journal articles and book entries, most notably in Perspectives of New Music and Music Perception; and the composer's own books: Mind Models, A Searcher's Path, and Form and Method. (3) These books present a detailed self-examination of this composer's work; the first-listed title outlines Reynolds's more general views on art, music, and society, while the latter two detail aspects of his compositional approach. The Roger Reynolds Collection at the Library of Congress, established in 1998, significantly expands the resources available for the study of this composer's life and music. Through this essay, I discuss the genesis of the Roger Reynolds Collection, present an overview of the materials currently housed in the archive, and provide some information about future plans for the collection. Reynolds feels that his music and compositional methodology lend themselves particularly to archival preservation and study. On this topic, the composer commented: Firstly, because of my background, it happened that my practice-- from the beginning--involved making very detailed preparatory plans, sketches, etc., so there was an unusually detailed record of my "creative process." This had potential interest to scholars and librarians: an opportunity to "look behind the scenes." As I was increasingly asked to lecture about my work, these sketches came in handy as ways of instantiating what I was lecturing about. Several publications about my ways as a composer followed, in journals and in book form. It was not only that I wished, of course, to have my own music understood, but also that there has been a notable lack of evidence regarding how later twentieth-century composers did their work: about the methods, ideals, etc. As I had the evidence, so to speak, it made sense to put it out there where teachers and students could examine, embrace, reject, whatever. Secondly, my work often--but not inevitably--involves the intertwining of technology with notated vocal and instrumental materials. It seems probable that the place of technology--already prominent in virtually all other aspects of music--will eventually become more central also to so-called "concert music." In this case, libraries and scholars will have to deal with this reality in time. There is also, of course, the matter of the web. (4) Karen Reynolds, the composer's flutist wife, is largely responsible for taking early initiative to locate a repository for her husband's scores, sketches, and private papers, a process that began in the mid 1990s. Commenting on this initial impetus, Roger Reynolds stated: There were several reasons for looking into the question of assuring that my materials--they were, indeed, a product of our partnership in a larger sense--would be cared for and preserved. Karen and I had led a very itinerant existence, and at the outset, as we moved from France to Italy to Japan and then back to the US, a good deal of what we had done (correspondence, photos, sketches, concert programs and the like) had been lost. …

Seeking to develop a better understanding of the collections they managed, and beginning a process of long-term planning, music librarians at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) enlisted the assistance of the library's preservation administrator in assessing their collection's condition. This assessment gathered information about the collection's history and publication formats, circulation patterns, and preservation needs with the intent of generating a more complete picture of the collection's health. The data collected indicated directions the library should take to enhance the collection's management, and refuted long-held assumptions about the collection's preservation needs and the institution's ability to purchase replacement copies of damaged materials. The following article describes the project's planning and organization, reports on the assessment's findings, and proposes a series of recommendations to improve the cooperative preservation of our printed music collections. COLLECTION HISTORY The University of Illinois at Urbana--Champaign's printed music collections began as an integral part of the library's main collection. Housed in the Main Library's stacks until 1944, the library administration moved the 15,000-piece collection of scores and books to the second floor of the Smith Music Hall. Within twenty years, Smith Music Hall's inadequacy as a proper library became clear. The collection not only filled all of the available space in Smith Hall by the mid-1960s, but it resided within locked, wire-caged shelving that lined the building's non-air-conditioned hallways. In 1969, the library administration relocated the Music Library's listening services and circulating collections, excepting the scores, to the newly constructed Undergraduate Library. Nevertheless, this solution also proved unsatisfactory; the scores remained in an increasingly cramped Smith Hall, separated from the listening and general circulating collections. In August 1974, the university dedicated a new music building, consolidating the library's collections and the public services operations into a new, purpose-built library within the new building. At this time, the library administration relocated many of the valuable, older materials to secure, climate-controlled conditions in the Rare Books and Special Collections Library (RBSC). Those items not meeting RBSC's collection policies moved to a closed stack area within the new Music Library. Although this move did not represent a concerted effort to collocate all printed music materials published before a specific date, the identification and transfer of these items served to create a circulating collection consisting almost entirely of materials published after the early 1900s. The musical scores received substantial support in terms of physical treatment when compared to other collections within the library. This resulted, in large measure, from the forward thinking of personnel within the Music Library itself. Nearly every score is either commercially bound or pamphlet bound, and personnel in the Music Library received training on basic collection maintenance treatments such as tipping in loose pages and mending torn leaves long before most individuals within the University Libraries were so trained. Although the Music Library's staff actively participated in caring for the collection, there was no assessment of the collection's condition. The recently completed assessment project occurred, in part, because of the deteriorating condition of the older Dewey-classed materials. The most significant reason for doing so, however, was the appointment of the University Library's first full-time preservation administrator. Although the University Library supported the continuous operation of a small mending unit from its inception as part of the Roosevelt administration's Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the centralized preservation program is relatively young when compared to those of similar institutions. …

Classical Music Library. Published by Classical International. http://www.classical.com (accessed 4 March 2004). [Requires and audio-enabled computer with an Internet connection. Microsoft Windows users need Windows 98, Internet Explorer 5.5 or Netscape 6, Macromedia Flash Player 6, and Windows Media Player 7 (Internet Explorer users only). Macintosh users need Apple OS9, Internet Explorer 5.2 or Netscape 6, and Macromedia Flash Player 6. Library subscriptions begin at $995 annually for three simultaneous users.] Music librarians and their patrons have for some time been anticipating the availability of networked audio, the ability to offer a wide selection of recordings accessible from any computer. Many libraries are networking audio reserves, and some larger libraries are making parts of their general recording collections available online. Yet for many libraries, large-scale networked audio is still a dream. Classical Music Library is an attempt to provide this service in the area of classical music. Such a service needs to be evaluated in several areas--depth and breadth of repertoire, quality of performances, usability, sound quality, and value. As of this writing, the service boasts fifteen thousand tracks, "benchmarked against the Music Library Association listing of essential sound recordings"--that is, A Basic Music Library (Chicago: American Library Association, 1997). The service is continually adding new recordings, and this number will almost certainly be out-of-date by the time this review is published. What does fifteen thousand tracks mean, though? What repertoire is covered, and in what depth? One must first realize that this is the number of tracks, not musical works. As with compact discs, most works are allotted one track for each movement. Selecting Medieval Music from the list of periods yields seventy-three works, comprising ninety-four tracks. Many of these are very short selections of Gregorian chant (offertories, introits, and others), but the list also includes some traditional tunes, and works by Hildegard von Bingen and Guillaume de Machaut. Conspicuous in their absence are Perotin, Leonin, Dunstaple, and Du Fay. At the other end of the chronological spectrum, the twentieth century brings up a list of over two hundred pages, including several thousand tracks. The century is not broken down chronologically or stylistically, so this list ranges from Debussy and Rachmaninoff to Stockhausen and Xenakis. In between there is a wealth of repertoire with some notable holes. In general, as one might expect, major composers fare better than lesser ones. For example. Beethoven is represented by 762 tracks and Johann Sebastian Bach by 713. Isaac Albeniz, though, is represented by only three individual movements, with no complete work. There are twenty-seven tracks of Aaron Copland's music, including some of his most well-known works (Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid), but no symphonies or songs. Looking more closely at Beethoven, one finds that most of his major works are included. There are at least two recordings of each of the symphonies, one of each of the string quartets, and one of each of the piano sonatas. All but two of the piano trios and most of the songs are missing, and--perhaps most significantly--Fidelio is also not included. There are some major works missing from the lengthy J. S. Bach list: the orchestra suites nos. 1, 2, and 4; all but a few of the cantatas; the St. Matthew and St. John Passions; the Christmas Oratorio; and the suites for violoncello and for lute. Opera seems to be a weakness in coverage. There are many operatic excerpts, but few complete operas. Verdi is represented by Otello only, and Mozart by Don Giovanni. There are no complete operas by Donizetti, Puccini, or Wagner. Of course one cannot expect comprehensiveness from a single audio service, particularly not at this early date. Some libraries will be able to expand their available repertoire of recordings, but the service should not generally be viewed as a replacement for an established collection of sound recordings. …

I have had the privilege of working with bibliographic instruction and information literacy at St. Olaf College for more than twenty years. (1) As a liberal arts college, our institution has always been committed to the concept of lifelong learning. Add a large music department with a particularly strong performance component to this mix, however, and it can create an interesting combination--something we often call "healthy tension." St. Olaf College also has a time-honored program of course-integrated, sequential library instruction, (2) and that approach to instruction is the focus of this article. Just what does course-integrated, sequential library instruction mean? It means that we work with existing courses and scheduled course time, collaborating with the faculty, to weave the library and the concept of information literacy into the course content with which students are presented. We accomplish this with specific assignments that build upon the knowledge and skills that students gain from semester to semester. And we do it again, and again, and again. Any good librarian knows one does not learn everything one needs to know about information in kindergarten; likewise, as musicians might phrase it, practice is one good way to get to perfect. This process of "weaving" the library with the music curriculum demands that sometimes the thread of information literacy goes one direction, sometimes another, and sometimes we cannot decide so we simply waffle. (3) It is an ever-changing, organic process--one influenced by the healthy pressures created by changes in the curriculum, the faculty, the technology we use, and the information we want the students to master. The underlying philosophy of St. Olaf's program of sequential, course-integrated library instruction has been strikingly consistent over the years. Based upon the model Evan Farber set for library education at Earlham College, our program has always relied upon the premise that students need to not only locate information but also understand the strategy behind their research and, very importantly, be able to evaluate the information they uncover. During the past two decades, technology has made it easier for students to locate information, but often more difficult for them to navigate the abundance of information they encounter to determine what is relevant and worthwhile in their research process. Pros and Cons When considering any course-integrated instruction program, we need to acknowledge the significant pros and cons that inevitably accompany the endeavor. One of the most daunting challenges is the initiative and energy required. Librarians must be more proactive in their approach to user education, and that can take much more energy than simply waiting for questions to come to the reference desk. (4) I am convinced that course-integrated library instruction is some of the most difficult teaching one can do: librarians visit pre-existing class environments, are always being observed by peers, (5) frequently encounter low student motivation, and often wait years for positive student feedback. And building a program within the curriculum is a slow process, often taking years if not decades to accomplish. At the same time, there are important advantages to such a program. First, and probably most interesting to our administrations, it is cost effective. Many students can be reached in one class period, saving expensive individual reference service for more complex and well-prepared questions. Librarians are also able to reach students who may not come into the library when reference service is available. Second, the program has had a positive effect on collection development, from both library and teaching faculty perspectives. Because I, as music librarian, am better aware of general course content and upcoming assignments, I can better anticipate needs for the collection in tandem with curricular demands and changes. …

The rich musical heritage and vital musical traditions of Brazil are the subject of increasing interest throughout the world. Contemporary popular musicians draw large and enthusiastic audiences in the United States, where knowledge of Brazilian music was long limited to the bossa nova of the early 1960s, heard in jazz interpretations by American musicians. The vitality of contemporary Brazilian music in the classical tradition is increasingly acknowledged as well, but a longer overview of music history in Brazil is more difficult to gain for musicians outside (or even inside) the country. A number of signficant stumbling blocks confront the researcher in Brazilian music. Only a tiny fraction of the musical production of Brazil in the almost two centuries since it achieved independence from Portugal in 1822 is available to scholars in American libraries. Of the vast number of musical scores printed in Brazil during this period, very few have been reprinted since their first publication. Bibliographical access to these scores is difficult, as they are not indexed in published catalogs of the holdings of the major collections. Library catalogs in Brazil will eventually be available as OPACs searchable over the Web, but most catalog information is accessible only as local card files. Bibliographies of scholarly work on music by Brazilians are few. Monographs on music published in Brazil commonly lack indexes, making their consultation difficult. A second edition of the most important reference work on Brazilian music, the Enciclopedia da musica brasileira, [1] has just been published, but from an extra-Brazilian point of view, the work has some liabilities, chief among them being the adoption of a single, integrated bibliography at the back of the volume rather than the provision of bibliography for each entry. Scholarship in Brazilian music by researchers from outside the country has not been extensive, which is perhaps not surprising given the low priority of lusophone language and culture in the United States, and even the most fundamental works in Portuguese are unavailable in English translation (for example, the writings of the modernist and nationalist Mario de Andrade). Three of the major music libraries in Rio de Janeiro are the Music Section of the National Library; the collection of the late scholar Mozart de Araujo, now housed at the library of the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil; and the Biblioteca Alberto Nepomuceno, the library of the Escola de Musica of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). The Escola de Musica is one of the oldest continuously operating musical institutions in Brazil, having been founded as the Conservatorio de Musica in 1841. It was incorporated into the Academia de Belas Artes in 1855. The Conservatorio de Musica moved into its first purpose-built quarters in 1872. The change from imperial government to a republic in 1889 affected many of the cultural institutions of the empire, including the Conservatorio, which was replaced by the Instituto Nacional de Musica (INM) in 1890, with composer Leopold Miguez as director. The INM moved to the present location of the Escola de Musica in 1910, occupying what had formerly been the edifice of t he National Library. New construction, including a concert hall, was necessary, and the physical plant arrived at its present configuration in 1922. The institution has gone through various administrative changes over the years, becoming a part of the Universidade do Rio de Janeiro after the revolution of 1930. The university was renamed the Universidade do Brasil in 1937, and received its present appellation, the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, in 1965. The library, named for the second director of the INM, composer Alberto Nepomuceno, holds significant special collections in addition to the resources used to support the teaching mission of the school, including numerous manuscripts of the important composer Jose Mauricio Nunes Garcia. …