Happy 1 Year Old Birthday to Interesting Music Stuff

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO INTERESTING MUSIC STUFF!

Take a second and listen to the 1 minute composition by Igor Stravinsky called the Greeting Prelude (1955) performed by the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw. This concert on 6 June 2009 was to celebrate Louis Andriessen on the occasion of his 70th birthday, and with this selection pays proper hommage to a composer who has been deeply influenced by Stravinsky and whose writings can be found in his book, The Apollonian Clockwork. Just as this concert celebrates Andriessen, Stravinsky's work celebrates the reknown conductor Pierre Monteux by dedicating the work to him as a gift for his 80th birthday. Monteux had conducted among others, the premieres of Stravinsky's Petrushka and Le Sacre du Printemps. Like little burning embers which crackle in a fireplace, the listener hears permutations and fragments of 'Happy Birthday' emerging from the sonic texture, scattered throughout the orchestration and resolution of voice-leading across registers and between instruments.

I wanted to start with this short clip because it is the birthday of this blog and it has now been a year since I started this endeavour and wanted to take stock for a moment. When I began I was attempting to bring together data and other resources which were available amidst the flat world of e-mail and flat websites. RSS has changed much of our approach towards information retrieval and discovery and I wanted this information to be easily findable and searchable.

Initially there were only visitors from the UK and then at the 4 month marker there were visitors from just over 50 countries. Now at the 1 year mark, I can now see that there are now over 90 countries which is incidentally around the same number who participate in the Miss Universe Pageant. Although not a swimsuit or analytical competition to save world hunger, I do appreciate that the information and its usefulness is growing and getting more disseminated into the online world.

From the onset I've interconnected resources I've tagged through Delicious into the blog. As the number of posts have grown, so too have issues of findability and browsability. To organise tags, I added a tag cloud and later, a Google search function. Each of these has added more functionality to the blog and served the moment. Usability and friends have said that the tag cloud has been looking a little murky and in the name of better usability, I've finally uploaded a better script which keeps the list (sorted alphabetically) hidden until needed, providing less clutter but optimal and easier browsability. (As murky as that cloud gets, I just love the way it spins around so don't want to axe it.)

So here's to Year number 2. Let's see where this adventure takes us and what further improvements need to be made to keep searchability and retrieval as efficient as possible whilst the scales keep on growing. I love learning new things - whether they are new resources, java, or code - and if there is anything that this year's adventure has taught me, it is that 1) I have a lot to learn and 2) that I can still learn.

Future of Music Publishing? - Sheet Music on Kindle

FUTURE OF MUSIC PUBLISHING?

SHEET MUSIC ON KINDLE

From Amazon Kindle's Blog today: "FreeHand Systems has announced that its Novato Music Press catalog, which includes thousands of classical, traditional and American music titles, is now available on Kindle. This marks the first time that a comprehensive collection of sheet music is being offered for this exciting new medium."

The CEO of FreeHand Systems, Kim Lorz is quoted as saying "musicians never have to fumble through paper scores or worry about forgetting a piece of music. Everything is wirelessly downloaded and stored in the Kindle and is available for easy recall."

The collection has holdings of J.S. Bach, Mozart and Beethoven and "minor composers [...] including Scott Joplin's Treemonisha." I find their characterisation of one of the first American operas as 'minor' truly amusing.

This could not stand in starker contrast to a presentation that Dr. Wolf-Dieter Seiffert, Managing Director of G. Henle Publishers gave on 1 April 2009 to the International Confederation of Music Publishers (ICMP).

Printed music has existed for over 5 centuries and Dr Seiffert's perspective reinforces the printed medium. He outlines some of the benefits of being able to download music which include providing access to lesser known composers and compositions which have been removed from the printed catalogue. Among the reasons why he thinks printed music will be around for another century are:

• "When my screen falls down to the floor, it breaks. Sheet music has been falling on the floor for 500 years – and survived.
• When you have a power blackout, your screen goes dark. Even 500 years from now music on paper will not need electric currency.
• Software is consistently updated, storage media is subject to change; that leads to the next technology-related problem: I am not sure whether the next generation of equipment is compatible. A few years from now, will I be able to read and convert the music I painstakingly scanned and downloaded? Music on paper is independent of software and does not need a disk drive."

You can access his full speech here. (PDF)

Whether music publishing will remain as static as Dr. Seiffert indicates or the pendulum swings to the Kindle remains to be seen. As a performer I can see benefits to both approaches, but should I go down the Kindle path I'll be sure not to drop it!

Off to IAML/IMS Conference

I'm attending the 2009 International Association of Music Libraries/International Musicological Society Joint Conference in Amsterdam. The conference theme is on Music and Notation. I'm delivering a paper called 'Musical Darwinism: the evolutionary implications of Indeterminate Notation and its intersection with a Library 2.0 world.' I hope to get slides up eventually and the paper if it turns out alright! After which I'll be travelling throughout Europe and updating the blog only periodically. I hope to be back to regular schedule in August. I hope you're all having a good summer.

Michael Jackson: Some Observations

MICHAEL JACKSON: SOME OBSERVATIONS

Michael Jackson (1958-2009) passed away yesterday and I find myself in awe of the coverage devoted to the more esoteric parts of his life (e.g. hyperbaric chamber, conversations with Bubbles, dangling of a baby outside a window, his infamous trial). All of this seems to distract from his contribution to popular music of the late 20th century. In the interest of full disclosure, I've liked his music but have always found his little sister, Janet's music the more interesting. Prior to yesterday I haven't bought an album since I forked out the cash for a cassette of Thriller.

I happened to be in HMV on Oxford Street where hordes of shoppers were congregating around a front-end display of his CDs and DVDs whilst his Billie Jean blasted away through the sound system. HMV had entrepreniuerally created an end of aisle display strictly on his music alone. As I've said I haven't bought one of his albums for a couple decades and was caught up in the moment and bought his album the '#1s' which is a compilation of his hits which went to the top of the Billboard charts, so not everything but many of the classics.

Rather than purchase a CD, I opted for this DVD as it had the videos of those covers. By no means was this an act of nostalgia, but thinking about Jackson's contributions to pop culture, it was really these videos which influenced a generation of pop music. What would the dance moves of Justin Timberlake or Beyonce look like without a Michael Jackson? What about his synthesis of R&B which form the undercurrent sound of boy band groups like NSYNC, Backstreet Boys and Blue?

It is easy for the media to focus on lawsuits over control of assets let alone child custody, but in time these will be overshadowed by his artistic contributions. At the time MTV was a fledgling network devoted to Cyndi Lauper, Duran Duran, a younger Madonna and Culture Club. With the Thriller album's hits of Billie Jean and Thriller, Jackson's dance moves indelibly made their mark on our collective consciousness. These dance moves which are highlighted in almost all of his videos coupled with savvy Quincy Jones R&B infused tracks was a revolutionary fusion of musical styles for the 20th century. It would serve as a structural constant for popular music of the past 30 years even outliving its antithesis found in the grunge music of Seattle's Nirvana in the 90s. In terms of musical importance, one could liken it to the 19th century cross-cultural synthesis which brought together antiphonal 'hollers' of the African-American slaves, the creation of the blues and the evolution into jazz.

Listening to this compilation, I'm struck in particular by the video to Man in the Mirror. Even though it cites many of history's notable events it doesn't seem dated. One of the most fitting images relate to the death of another artist, John Lennon. (I remember that date but his passing affected in particular one of my cousins who could play almost all of his and the Beatles' tunes by memory on the piano. I'm pretty sure she could probably do the same for MJ.) As with Jackson's passing it is his musical contributions which stay in the memory. Back to the video: although the Berlin Wall has fallen and Poland has joined the EU, there is still gender/racial/sexual inequality, conflict in the Middle East, nuclear proliferation still haunts us as does poverty in the Third World. Will it seem dated in another 20 years? I'm not sure, but thanks to digital technology Michael Jackson's music and video will continue to exist. Perhaps his influence will even be discussed in textbooks as are the origins of the blues and jazz today.

It's no Topsy Turvy, D'Oyly Carte Prompt Books Digitised

D'OYLY CARTE PROMPT BOOKS -

GILBERT AND SULLIVAN OPERAS
VICTORIA & ALBERT MUSEUM

THEATRE & PERFORMANCE COLLECTIONS

From Act I Prompt Book of the Pirates of Penzance available from the V&A Theatre Collection

The Victoria and Albert Museum's Theatre & Performance Department has digitised several of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company's original prompt books, which were used in the end of the 19th century at the Savoy Theatre in the productions of Gilbert and Sullivan operas.

Some of the prompt books digitised include The Mikado, Princess Ida and the Pirates of Penzance which all date from the 1880s. It will undoubtedly serve as a useful tool for those researching musical theatre of London in the late 19th century.

One could speculate that Mike Leigh, the director of the movie Topsy Turvy or a member of his production staff, might have consulted these very prompt books to give an air of authenticity to their movie.

"Three Little Maids" Trio from The Mikado available from the V&A Theatre Collection

To see the full range and download a copy visit the V&A site: http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/theatre_performance/objects_theatre_performance/doyly_carte/index.html

Digitised Mendlessohn (Breitkopf & Härtel Edition) works on line!

Opening bars of Felix Mendelssohn's Overture to the Hebrides (op. 26) © Bayerische Staatsbibliothek: http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0002/bsb00026504/images/index.html?seite=3

The Munich Digitisation Centre in cooperation with the music department of the Bavarian State Library has added the first edition of the works of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy to its digital collections on the occasion of Mendelssohn’s 200th birthday on February 03, 2009. Our collection of historical editions of the work of famous composers is being continued after a Händel- and a Liszt-edition with Mendelssohn’s work as edited by Breitkopf & Härtel in 157 volumes.

This edition is divided into 19 series (work groups) and was compiled by the musician and friend of Mendelssohn Julius Rietz (1812-1877) during 1874-1877. It includes around 5900 pages and contains all known works of Mendelssohn at that time. Some early works and alternative versions have only been discovered decades later and are not contained in Rietz’ edition. Nevertheless, the work of this great German composer is represented here in its vast spectrum, including the symphonic work, the chamber music, oratories, operas, music for spectacles, sacred music, and Lieder.

The digitised Mendelssohn-edition can also be found on the ViFaMusik web pages (www.vifamusik.de) where a lot of sheet music and books on music from the music department of the Bavarian State Library are presented.

Link to the Mendelssohn-edition:
http://www.muenchener-digitalisierungszentrum.de/index.html?c=kurzauswahl&adr=mdz1.bib-bvb.de/~db/ausgaben/uni_ausgabe.html?projekt=1216809160

Link to the digitisations within the ViFaMusik:
http://mdzx.bib-bvb.de/vifamusik_e/index.php?pcontent=digitalisierungen

Jürgen Diet
Bavarian State Library
Digital Library Department
Ludwigstr. 16
D-80539 München
Germany
Tel. ++49-89-28638-2768
Fax ++49-89-28638-2672
email: juergen.diet [at] bsb-muenchen.de

Happy New Year to IMS!

Belated greetings to all after spending some weeks on the continent. As with death and taxes, there is no escaping the real or virtual world and a return to the blogosphere was inevitable. New Year's resolutions include building on some of the site's improvements.

Many of you will have noticed the new Meebo chat functionality and that entries are now individually posted rather than an über-post based on usability analysis. I think that this improves information retrieval as well as tag searchability.

I've received some positive feedback but as someone has put it, my tag 'cloud looks a little dirty.' I had no idea that it would become like the BBC Weather crystal ball due to the volume of tagging! I'm exploring several options to allow for easier searchability across the postings and tags with new site indexing. You can look forward to that upgrade in 2009.

When I started INTERESTING MUSIC STUFF over 4 months ago I had no idea if it would be of any use to anyone.  Having done a bit more usability analysis, it is clear that it is.  So, I would like to say thanks to the thousands of you around the world (in over 50 countries) who have already visited and the hundreds of returning visitors. I hope that you found and continue to find the blog useful and I will endeavour to keep it up-to-date with upgrades along the way.  

Over the holidays I re-read Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word and was struck by the prescience of his observations.  In discussing the revolutionary influence of electronic typography, Ong wrote (in 1971) that 'secondary orality generates a sense for groups immeasurably larger than those of primary oral culture --McLuhan's 'global village.' From the internet to the blog, I don't think that either Ong or McLuhan could have envisioned the impact of technology and its ability to transform the dissemination of the written word. And in that spirit, here goes 2009. 

Elliott Carter at 100

The iconoclast of American music, Elliott Carter recently turned 100. The celebration of his centenary has been marked with various interviews, performances and other online exhibitions.

One interview was conducted on the NPR radio programme "All Things Considered:" http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98081089 (8:20)

Elliott Carter discussing his new piece, Caténaires, for pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard and the Ensemble Contemporaine (26 October interview from New York): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp95zFUPEj0&feature=related (9:58)



He was also interviewed on NPR (National Public Radio, US) on the Charlie Rose Show (PBS) alongside pianist/conductors James Levine and Daniel Barenboim. The Youtube clip is an excerpt from the interview and contains Barenboim's recollections of his late friend, Edward Said, and his reminiscenses on the 'late style.'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiDd4JVN9Vo  Alternatively, one can watch the entire interview at http://www.charlierose.com/

Other recent interviews include one with Frank Oteri (American Music Center - New Music Box) from mid-2008: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zzs8Ov2p-Rc (5:08)



Also in celebration of Carter's 100th birthday, the Library of Congress has digitised the manuscript sketches of his Sonata for Cello and Piano and the String Quartet no. 1. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.ihas.200155900/default.html Lastly, they have put up a digitised version of The Musical Languages of Elliott Carter (1984) by Charles Rosen which operates in a manner similar to the British Library 'Turning the Page'.

A detail from p. 68 of the manuscript sketches of Carter's Cello Sonata from the Library of Congress.

Thanks to the Library of Congress for digitising these invaluable sketches and Happy Birthday to Mr Carter, may your next century be as prolific as your first!

Flickr, Creative Commons and Copyright 2.0

Flickr is a fabulous resource. Not only can you share your photos with others, it serves as a large repository for stock photos which can be used for academic presentations, etc. In terms of licensed academic resources there is ArtStor, but having digested the license for ease of re-use, 2 words come to mind: not friendly. There are other sites which have stock photos (Phil Bradley has a summary of these.) I've experimented with a bunch of these sites testing keywords and usability and range of stock and bookmarked my favourites under the 'stock_photos' tag in my Delicious feed.

In particular, Flickr epitomises the spirit of Web 2.0 and how copyright (and inherent intellectual property) has evolved for the web. In addition to social networking by sharing your creative ideas, endeavours, Flickr also allows you to share your content with as many or as few restrictions as possible via a Creative Commons license. (Another aspect of Web 2.0 is that you can follow the addition of new content and developments uploaded (by individual) via RSS feeds at the bottom of that individual's page.)

From the main page (above) click on search, then click through to the Advanced search button.

Scroll on down until you see the following filters:

From this point, you can restrict your search to photos whose owners will allow re-use or adaptability of content (most just asking for a citation back to the original on Flickr), some allowing adaptability but for non-commercial purposes. It is this variance which allows a Creative Commons license to sit in the middle of a continuum ranging from copyright (where permission must be sought for any modifications) to public domain (do with it what you will).

From www.creativecommons.org

At a time when MEPs are debating extension to existing copyright laws, creativity in this new medium will be stifled as the editors of the Guardian eloquently put yesterday in their tribute to Creative Commons co-founder Lawrence Lessig.

"[Lessig] regards extension of copyright as anathema to the YouTube generation and a brake on economic growth. He also thinks it is against the US constitution, which states that copyright should be "limited". The original limit has been extended from 14 to 70 years after the death of the creator, and Prof Lessig points out that one of the main corporations that lobbied for this, Disney, cut its creative teeth by raiding the public domain for works from Snow White to the Hunchback of Notre Dame. If the current term for copyright had existed then, it might have suffocated Mickey Mouse at birth." http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/22/intellectualproperty-copyright

Speaking of Disney, it is only apropos that I highlight the following Youtube clip which covers issues of copyright, in particular, the fair use (US) / fair dealing (UK) doctrine using snippets of Disney's own cartoon characters.

Whilst this clip is very entertaining and outlines the general principle of fair use, there are some differences with fair dealing (UK) albeit both operate from a common ideology which balances the market value (i.e. what an author could potentially lose) against a reasonable amount of time for the author to enjoy those royalties. (To this end, I think it's about time Steamboat Willie passed into public domain! I'm not including the famous Mickey Mouse clip which first synchronised sound with animation in this posting but here is the link to the 1928 clip.) To learn a bit more about Creative Commons licensing and how you can use it and adapt materials for your research, this clip is a nice introduction. (Because it is hosted on Revver, small annoying text ads appear like super-titles, once they appear they can be immediately minimised which I HIGHLY recommend!)

With all of the discussion on copyright I would be remiss if I did not mention Eduserv's new Copyright Tutorial which was brought to my attention in a recent posting by Sheila Webber. Although I am not a (big) fan of Eduserv, I give credit where credit is due and they've done a good job here. The Copyright Toolkit (http://www.copyrighttoolkit.com/) is a good resource with a UK focus for those wishing to ensure compliance. It has exercises to work through different scenarios and will serve as a nice reference as it contains relevant bits of case law to illustrate their points.

Blog Upgrade 1.1

When I started this blog I knew there was a need to pull together information which has been floating around in the ether. That was one of the main reasons for embarking upon this Web 2.0 venture. By adding RSS into the mix and having the data picked up by various meta-sites its re-distribution has increased its exposure and benefit.

After a couple of months in and some initial analysis of the data and how it is being used, I've decided to reconfigure how the conference and call for papers information is posted. This will enable more targeted searching and retrieval. Thank you to the hundreds of readers who have been using the site, I hope it is a useful tool for your work now and in future!

Drop a line/comment if you are happy or sad!

Groovy Grove's changes its name and gets a facelift

Earlier this year Grove Music Online was rebranded as Oxford Music Online now incorporating The Oxford Companion to Music [OCM] (2002) and the 2nd edition of The Oxford Dictionary of Music [ODM] (2006) in addition to The New Grove Dictionary of Opera [NGDOP] (1992) and The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz [NGDOJ] (2001) which have been available with the entire second edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians [NGDOM] since the database launched sometime in 2001. I'm mildly amused when resources attempt rebranding exercises as they ignore one's cognitive and experiential development.

Case in point, my own first exposure to Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians was Stanley Sadie's 1980 version. I was preparing with other Music majors for one of our History of Western Music examinations, in particular, Professor Suzanna Waldbauer's infamous 'drop the needle' listening tests in the midst of a blizzard. Those who do not have a pre-CD/digital audio awareness may not appreciate how fun name-the-tune examinations used to be!

Whilst the Palisca and Grout History of Western Music was our central textbook with some additional support from Hoppin's Medieval Music and Reese's Music in the Renaissance, several of us were having a hard time distinguishing aurally between motets, virelai, madrigals, caccia, ballata, frottola. We would take turns just dropping the needle somewhere in the middle of the LP and try to identify the clip within a few seconds. Passing by our study room, Prof Waldbauer said (in her thick Hungarian accent), "Honey, if you are unsure, just go to Grove's and investigate. From there you can follow the bibliography and see where it takes you. Sadie has corrected most of the mistakes [particularly on early music]. Go to Grove's." Worried about the impending snow storm someone asked whether the listening examination would be cancelled.

Having grown up in rural Hungary studying with Zoltán Kodály and attending both the Franz Liszt Academy and the National Conservatory of Music in Budapest, "Zhuzhy" Waldbauer was not afraid of anything, let alone some snow. In characteristic style, she responded "don't worry darling, I'm sleeping here in the Department so that I can give you your exam."

And in spite of the blizzard which dumped nearly 1.5 metres of snow (above), we did have our 'drop-the-needle' listening exam having excised some further distinguishable elements of the various musical forms from Grove's. Now despite the name change to Oxford Music Online, I will always have Grove's indelibly burnt into my brain (as will many others coming out of that tradition!)

In terms of this latest incarnation, there are some notable changes. There has been a complete revamp of the overall structure of articles. Previously, when searching for a particular composer, one might retrieve two valid results drawing on an article from NGDOM and another one from the NGDOP (if it was a composer who had composed operas like Verdi for example) or from the NGDOJ (if it was drawing its source from there). Now entries from these specialised Grove's are classified as 'subjects' which function as 'sub-articles' to the primary article.

So a search in the new interface for Gioachino Rossini retrieves 55 results. A filter according to 'subjects' limits the result to 41 (above) which are mostly entries of his individual operas from the NGDOP. Overall, this is an improvement from Grove Music Online as the individual results used to display as valid entry points with no way to filter the results. You were in either Grove Music 'proper' or in the 'opera' section with this example. (However, I did like the fact that results would have the Level 1, 2 or 3 designation for exact matches and those which might be related. And this seems to be absent now.)

Whilst structurally improved, content (IMHO) can seem unnecessarily more cluttered. The addition of OCM and the ODM have certainly collocated more digital content, but does it add any more value? It is easy enough to de-select/select these options to bring in/exclude their respective articles, but in the editor's own words, the new content will "supplement Grove's more extensive coverage with content geared toward undergraduates and general users." It is already an authoritative source and researchers of varying level can take what they need. I certainly did as an undergraduate and I do now professionally albeit for very different reasons. At the end of the day, I don't think their particular addition adds much more value to the online experience.

Searching across the interface, the Boolean operators and truncation wild cards are still the same. Symphon* will retrieve plurals and foreign spellings. One of the nice features of the new layout is the 'tab' setup between the primary article, works, multimedia and related content. The related content refers to other relevant NGDOM articles as well as to the other external content. For example, if your institution has a subscription to Oxford Dictionary of National Biography then there is seamless integration to pursue further information leads. For example, more information on John Lennon can be found in the ODB below.

In addition to closer collaborations with the ODB, there is also the opportunity to connect bibliographic data in the entries to RILM. It should also be noted that it is also now possible to listen to materials licensed via the Classical Music Library and the Database of Recorded American Music (DRAM). These recordings would display in the Multimedia tab (if your institution has a subscription). If not, there are still other interesting materials such as score examples, various photographs and images and even playbills from the first performance (below).

One of my main criticisms of Grove Online (and to some degree Oxford Music Online) comes down to one of the key parameters used to evaluate online resources. In relation to the CRAP Index (which measures Currency, Reliability, Authority and Purpose/Point of View) the database sails through the 'R', 'A' and 'P'. Where I think it still needs a lot of work is with the issue of Currency.

When the NGDOM went online, there was no date (other than the copyright at the bottom of the screen) indicating when the entry was written. In the printed domain, one could easily identify this from the imprint. However, when it migrated into the virtual world, one could not identify with certainty when and/or if an article had been updated. Unlike journal articles which have volume and edition specific information, databases, particularly, those built on article entries, can not be uniformly captured with a roving copyright. This issue has been addressed to some degree in the latest upgrade. Some of the entries now contain a 'last updated' statement but many still do not. Oxford Music Online has said that the static articles (those drawn from the NGDOP and the NGDOJ) will not 'be subject to regular updating' and as such, will not have this critical piece of identification.

It should come as no surprise that this authoritative online music resource with its capacity for full text searching is still overall a tremendous benefit to researchers outweighing any of its shortcomings. The fact that it is collaborating with other existing music providers bodes well for future integration and seamless serendipitous information discovery.

No Drama just an Induction

I had a truly delightful time today doing an Induction for PGCE Drama students of the Central School of Speech and Drama. (I hope I didn't bore them to death!) It gave me a chance to test out some of the Web 2.0 applications firsthand with a group of students. I spent the first half talking about the traditional caveats to searching library resources, toggling between windows to demonstrate active searches in particular resources. From that foundation I went on to describe the shift in usage of the web and technology and how this can inform academic research.

Looking back at it I realise that my statement that 'everything I just said half an hour ago on controlled vocabulary now goes out the window' really drives home how much information management and literacy has shifted in the last few years with these social networking tools. For me, it seemed to be like Pigafetta's descriptive chronicles five centuries ago detailing and refining the edges of the map and conceptions of Magellan's world. In spite of time's travels, librarians are exploring anew in that area along the burnt edges of today's information map. Hopefully it will be as revolutionary a discovery as it was centuries earlier!

RSS Razzmatazz

What is RSS? It can stand for either 'real simple syndication' or 'rich site summary.' In a nutshell, it brings the web to you rather than you going out and finding information. Broadly, it allows for the reuse of content from the original site, so that you can see new content drawn to your browser or feed page without having to first visit the actual website.

The following clip (under 4 minutes) has one of the best and succinct explanations of what RSS is and how it changes our use of the web. (The Netflix reference is a company in the US setup to compete against the Blockbuster model at the time which made users come in-person to browse and select their products. Netflix's model upended existing trends by offering a user-tailored and customisable online experience offering convenience of selection where users could reserve, request (DVD) videos rather than risk missing a highly anticipated release due to high demand (as Blockbuster's users frequently complained at the time). It also allowed users the ability to keep a movie as long as needed rather than the 2-3 day limit imposed by Blockbuster at the time.

As of this clip in April 2007 Technorati had calculated there were 50million+ blogs. Less than a year later (as of February 2008) Technorati had the number in excess of 185million blogs. By some algorithmic calculations - there are now over 212million blogs as of September 2008. Clearly, with such exponential growth of material, it becomes even more important for those conducting research over the web to 1) be alerted to the creation of new relevant information resources and 2) be able to critically evaluate them.

Phil Bradley has said that 'RSS underpins all aspects of Web 2.0' and when you see the prevalence of the RSS icon, you quickly realise its intrinsic interconnectedness. Pervading all major news web sites to academic databases such as Ingenta Connect and Academic Search Premier, one can also follow new information posted on blogs, new library books as they enter a library catalogue, new resources added via Delicious, new pictures added in Flickr, new presentations in Slideshare or even newly digitised music score collections from the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (http://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/index.html?c=rss&l=de)! RSS truly gives new meaning to the term 'information superhighway' where information is shunted faster than I could possibly type on Google or navigate via the various taxonomic folders of Bookmarks I've accumulated organised into Subjects / Publishers / News / e-Journals / E-Resources / D-Spaces / E-Prints / Metalib / Copyright / Diglib / Infolit / and then my favourite catch-all folders Junk1 / Junk2 / and to clarify things further there's Junk3.

Just a sample of some RSS buttons in their various guises.

What is the best way to maintain RSS feeds? That really depends on individual preferences. Each has its own strength. If you are a big fan of the email format then the Google reader (www.google.com/reader) is probably for you.

Each new post shows up similar to an unread email. Its view can also be filtered by the various subscription feeds you are receiving:

Another feed reader is 'My Yahoo' (http://uk.my.yahoo.com/) which allows you to set up multiple pages depending on your research interests. I originally set this up to follow news, library developments and music journals on separate pages as it was my own internal sense of categorisation which was unsatisfied with Google's approach. (Google did not offer this type of multiple page arrangement. ) Yahoo also offers the ability to customise the appearance of your page.

Bloglines also offers the opportunity (http://www.bloglines.com/) to organise RSS feeds. It is quite popular albeit I found it a little too austere for me. As much as software creators try to imitate and replicate the sanitised cleanliness of Google, there will always be those who need a bit of flamboyance in our lives that appreciate the ability to customise and re-appropriate!

Lastly, under the rubric of 'start pages' there are two further RSS aggregators: Netvibes and Pageflakes. These two RSS feeders allow not only the feeding of text but also dynamic add-ons called widgets (Netvibes) or flakes (Pageflakes) allowing a high degree of customisation. (I especially like the colour choices in Pageflakes.) Both of these exemplify the collaborative nature of Web 2.0 (as compared with the earlier Yahoo and Google readers but they are loosening up a bit as of late) in that they can be shared publicly (with options of creating private pages) to allow for collaboration.

Example of Netvibes page. (http://www.netvibes.com)

Example of Pageflakes. (http://www.pageflakes.com)

Very little differentiates these two products, except for the fact that Pageflakes allows for podcasts broadcast over the internet to be fed into the web page. The add-ons really allow for a more user-driven experience whilst reading the news or latest music or media journal by having pictures from Flickr or videos from Youtube feed into your RSS page. It really re-defines the concept and experience of a personal home page from the Web 1.0 environment. At the end of the day RSS allows for a more flexible approach towards research by providing concurrent retrieval of information via pre-defined parameters. Perhaps it does need to be said that whilst many of us may have one computer at home with our favourite web sites and blogs bookmarked (and even feeding into our Mozilla browser), all of these readers allow instantaneous access to our feeds of interest from any internet point removing the limitations of a single desktop.

Basic information literacy assumptions

I was giving an introductory session to Music resources for several new library staff members yesterday to help familiarise them with the printed collection (and its issues) and some of the online resources available. Over the course of my presentation I was suprised at my own assumptions of (perceived) knowledge of information retrieval, falling somewhere in the middle of the SCONUL Pillars grid which is one of several scales that map levels of information literacy.

I was explaining information discovery by demonstrating a pivot search using Library of Congress subject headings. Use of databases and OPACs, as opposed to Google, operate on a few principles: some acquaintance with Boolean logic, knowledge of trucation and the principles of controlled vocabulary. I don't expect everyone understands (or needs to learn) how fields index, the role of authority files, etc., but search strategies fundamentally built and informed by these principles will improve accuracy and progress information literacy development.

In hindsight another surprise was that as penultimate presenter I thought I'd be duplicating what others had presented but in fact much of it was new or quasi-new to the participants. I think the lesson learnt has less to do with holes in potential staff knowledge training and information induction and more to do with testing underlying assumptions and a fundamental return to basics; tabula rasa.

From Homo singularis to Homo socialis

As I've been preparing Inductions for this autumn's masses, I've accumulated quite a bit of information on Web 2.0 applications but it has occurred to me that I need to lay the foundation of conveying Web 1.0 in the course of these discussions. For me there's no way better to accomplish this endeavour than by articulating my thoughts 'on paper' (or by sketching out a series of all intervallic chords but those are ensconced in my Moleskine stave sketchbook.) Thus, our evolutionary tale of man's use of the web commences.

Whilst the Web itself may be nearly 30 years old (if one uses as a marker those old SMTP operations which sent email between various government research labs and academic institutions in the early 80s), it wasn't until Netscape launched its Mosaic browser in 1994 that the nascent web took off with users gaining a visual experience from what previously had been a text based application. Although Netscape no longer exists having been eviscerated by Microsoft, it represented the fundamental feature of the web at the time - access via a GUI (graphic user interface).

How far the web has come since then! One need only realise that as ubiquitous as Google is now, it is only just celebrating its 10th birthday. John Naughton wrote in Sunday's Observer on the beta release of Google's new browser, Chrome, highlighting the fact that the 'company is aiming to redefine the browser as an operating system.' In real terms this represents another potential shift as the battle-of-the-browser circle comes full turn. What IE destroyed has emerged in an open source phoenix and fully outlines the strategic direction (at least where from Google's perspective) where it thinks the future of the web lies. That it has been released in open source truly underscores the power and impact of Web 2.0 philosophy.

What is that philosophy? Basically, I would sum it up as collaborative democracy. Much like the Linux operating system and Mozilla's Firefox browser, open sourceware powered by collective intelligence will outperform and outcreate even the billions invested in Microsoft's R&D division. Collaborative democracy outlines a dynamic shift of authoritarian control represented by Web 1.0. When the visual web connected the world anew, the creation, editing and development of web pages were limited to those who knew html and/or had sufficient administrative permissions to implement these changes. (I'm not saying that pages couldn't be created without knowledge of Front Page or having ftp permissions - God knows Geocities hosted its own prescient form of Youtube with the Dancing Jesus back in the late 90s!) However, control of access was (and for most institutions which haven't evolved to 2.0) and still is, centrally managed, slow to change and (from a user perspective) unidirectional. In Web 1.0 software applications must be loaded by an Administrator and are maintained similarly.

Web 2.0 manifests itself in a virtual desktop and operating system which has its software applications scattered across the web. You are the Systems administrator customising what is needed. Further, the applications themselves draw together communities not only socially, but also to solve problems, or advocate issues with others of similar disposition. It is participative and open - inviting comments and criticisms to improve the product or test arguments. Imagine the power of this group intelligence! Without the stringent controls of Web 1.0 - entities such as wikis can accomplish what many web content management systems have tried to do but failed, engagement! The individual is more willing to participate because they have as much voice as the person next to them or up the ladder. Democracy at work.

I recently had a conversation about some of these Web 2.0 applications with a librarian who said to me, 'why do we need to do these Web 2 stuff? It's just blogs and wikis. We update our web pages enough.' With all due respect, it misses the underlying message of facilitating democratic participation. Do organisations truly put all comments out that they receive, I wonder? Is there any censoring (other than profanity or pornography) which is taking place? I can imagine that some CEOs would be cringing at the lack of a hierarchical structure insofar as some clerk in the mail room has as much voice as members of the Board of Trustees, but that in essence, is the power of Web 2.0

I think I'll close out this post with two final thoughts. First, that the world at large is truly taking up Web 2.0. Its applications generate far more content than those flat and static Web 1.0 web pages. (By which I mean, their text can not be syndicated elsewhere.) To bring this home, one need only look at Youtube's output alone. In its 3 years of existence its user generated content has surpassed over half a century of cummulative TV broadcasting in the United States with all of its networks (Wesch,Portal to Media Literacy,2008). Secondly, collaboration is key. Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon, Facebook, Bebo, Myspace, Delicious, Technorati, Twitter, Flickr (and 100s more) derive their power from the community - 'from the people by the people to the people' (Abraham Lincoln) evolving from the individual (homo singularis) to the collaborative man (homo socialis).

Web 2.0 and Libraries - Synergy or Consignment to the Dustbin of History?

When I worked at the MIT Libraries, I remember Ann Wolpert's axiom (the Director) of libraries always being 'relevant, excellent and adaptable'. I'd heard from colleagues that over the years the selection of these particular attributes might vary slightly, but the first one 'relevant' was always omnipresent serving as the nucleus of qualities essential for decision and policy making. Against the evolving landscape of the web, never has relevance been more central to the positioning of libraries to support their continued viability and vitality.

Whilst it's been some 3 years since I first took Phil Bradley's blog course at TFPL, the recent expansion of my subject portfolio to include Film, Media and Theatre has motivated me to explore likewise the expansion of resources available in Web technologies to support these subjects. It's been my goal to integrate these Web 2.0 developments into the research training and reader inductions I provide. If the vast quantity of applications seem daunting to folks I can only say that you've just got to 'do it' (as the old Nike campaign used to exhort). After doing a bit of digestion on the results of a cursory literature review, the bulk of the past few weeks have been spent testing these softwares and social networking services. So if I can do it, anyone can.

The use of these applications are endless and their use has been exponential. Libraries can not ignore these trends. Further, we must fully integrate what we do best in information management and the development of information literacy skills with what we can learn from these technologies so that we can remain relevant for years to come.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I'll be blogging on some of the applications I've investigated and how I think they can support and supplement research endeavours. For now, I leave you with a clip I just made and loaded up to Youtube.
Its title is Web 2.0 - An Information Literacy Trailer.



All of the elements needed to create this clip, including resource discovery, production and implementation, draw on these Web2.0 applications: Zoho,Reddit, Digg, Technorati, Delicious, Furl, Diigo, Slideshare, Rsizr, FotoFlexer,Flickr, Filebig and Youtube.

Wrapping up IAML with a German portal

Only a half-intended pun to the post title. No, this is not a new Christo installation, but one of several sculptures in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli which were temporarily wrapped whilst enabling works are being undertaken.

A detail of one of the many frescoes of Pompeii which survived the fires of Vesuvius and now reside in the Museo. One funny anecdote to share was that the museum guards did not want any flash photography (which I can understand) due to conservation reasons. Ironically, there were several museum pieces which had Pulisci mi (clean me) scrawled in the layers of dust which musn't be too good for the longevity and upkeep.

Before leaving for Naples, I actually stumbled across a new musicology portal called
ViFaMusik. Little did I know that there would be a poster session by Jürgen Diet on this important resource at the conference. ViFaMusik stands for Virtuellen Fachbibliothek Musikwissenschaft (Virtual Library of Musicology.)

Front page of http://www.vifamusik.de/

The main portal has an English and German interface but links to other portals and referential databases may be in German only. Some of the highlights include a useful aggregate of music e-journals. Many institutions have brought journals freely available across the web and imported the relevant metadata from places like the DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) http://www.doaj.org) into their catalogues. Other approaches have opted to include the information in lists such as the Golden Pages of Royal Holloway(http://www.rhul.ac.uk/Music/Golden-pages/journals.html).

The Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliothek (EZB) follows this latter approach but with a slightly more refined interface. They have an easily identifiable visual icon (a red/green light traffic) to indicate which are freely available across the web or if it is a licensed resource requiring a subscription. The Golden Pages' list of journals do contain access information but one has to sift through an exorbitant amount of text line by line and would benefit from this type of approach.

Example of the EZB on display.

Another key feature of ViFa Musik is the Bibliographie des Musikschrifttums (BMS) which is a German RILM that provides bibliographic data covering music publications from 1986 to present on everything from journal articles and festschrifts to conference proceedings and monographs. They are now working backwards into the earlier half of the 20th century. To complement research in the early 20th and 19th century there is always the Hofmeister XIX (http://www.hofmeister.rhul.ac.uk/cocoon/hofmeister/index.html) which is a searchable interface of the Hofmeister Monatsberichte for the period between 1829-1900. Down the road, I will blog on about this particular resource.

Example of the BMS interface

Another key feature of the website is the portal of databases. The Online-Datenbanken im Datenbank-Infosystem which is similar to the Golden Pages in that it organises resources according to music disciplines but doesn't have the visual stoplight like the EZB. However, it does have a pretty clean look where one distinguishes between frei im Web (freely available) and lizenzpflichtig (requires license).

An example of the DBIS interface

There are almost 140 musicological databases in the interface which is maintained by the 'musicological section of the DBIS (Databases Information System), a cooperative service for the use of scholar databases offered by the University Library of Regensburg.'

Lastly, but with just as much significance, what portal would be complete without a section for digitisation projects being undertaken. (http://www.vifamusik.de/index.php?pcontent=digitalisierungen) Initiatives are underway to digitise the critical editions of Franz Liszt (Carl Alexander) and Georg Friedrich Händel (Chrysander's 1858-1902 edition) and the periodical, Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau. Below you can see an example of the score of the opening bars of Liszt's symphonic poem Prometheus:

As you can see the portal is filled with lots of interesting features. If you want to follow future contributions to the database, there is an RSS feed available. Once you subscribe you will be able to see what new sheet music digitisations are being converted by the Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek. If RSS subscription is still a little mysterious, I will be blogging quite shortly about its features and how to get the most out of it!

More IAML08 and a French portal to contemporary resources

It's Bank Holiday Monday with no sun (but fortunately no rain as well) here in London and I wanted to blog a bit more about IAML08. London's overcast skies stand in stark contrast to the weather in Naples where the sun was shining every day. Having lived in London only 4 years I am continually impressed by the efficient public transportation from the Underground to network rail and the extensive bus lines whether you are going to one of the airports or just fumbling around the capital. Arriving in Naples on an Easyjet flight, plans to take a bus from the airport to the city were immediately thwarted by a sciopero or strike/industrial action (which was one of several to encumber la mia esperienza di Napoli.)

Local public transportation scioperi aside, my penchant for trying new forms of transport were rewarded by taking the funicolare (below) which climb the sides of Naples much like the cable-cars in San Francisco but instead go through tunnels up the hills of the city and are unhindered by traffic.

I particularly like this shot of the funicolare arriving into Morghen from Montesanto. (I think the driver reading the newspaper whilst in operation would be a nice job for the summer!)

Now onto one of the conference presentations: a new (French) portal to contemporary resources. Michael Fingerhut of IRCAM presented (http://www.musiquecontemporaine.fr/) which was a joint venture between IRCAM, the Cdmc - (Centre de documentation de la musique contemporaine), Cité de la musique, the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris, and the Médiathèque Musicale Mahler. With the goal of creating a single portal for contemporary music, the website serves as a virtual catalogue (with facets for text, score, audio, video, biography, event, training and programme notes) as well as pulling together performance, lecture and exhibition information at the various institutions. The main interface is now available in bilingual versions of French and English.

Front page of http://www.musiquecontemporaine.fr

Running a search in the interface one can initially only search by one facet (in the recherche express). Once you have a search result you can further refine by the facets listed above. Materials which are accessible from your location are denoted with a green circle. (Most files, particularly the audio and video files, are only fully accessible on-site in one of the institutions due to licensing restrictions.)

It is hoped that ongoing negotiations with rights holders societies will allow more materials to be available remotely. For now, short excerpts of audio recordings are available usually up to about 3 minutes. Once you click on the 'listen to an excerpt' (Ecoutez un extrait) - a browser like this will display:

Example of the site's embedded media player

I can get excerpts to play in IE, but have had problems with Mozilla which may be just a script issue. In any case, in spite of the time restrictions, it is nice to hear excerpts of recent premieres and other works that may not even get recorded and read the notes and thoughts of living composers' latest compositions. I hope that the powers that be at IRCAM and the various performing societies will allow a license for academic institutions outside France so that those in the EU and throughout the world can fully benefit from this digital resource.

Back from IAML08

(Panoramic view of Naples in the shadow of Mt Vesuvius taken from the Castello Sant'Elmo high above the city.)

After spending some weeks in Italy, I'm finally back at work. It wasn't all r&r having attended the IAML08 Conference which was held in Naples, Italy this year. (IAML stands for the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres.) Kudos to the conference's organising committee and the host Italian branch (Complimenti e mille grazie!) who pulled off one terrific conference full of interesting presentations!

The keynote speaker, Dr Luciano Scala (Regional Director for Cultural and Landscape Heritage of Campania) delivered (in Italian with Powerpoint slides in English) an amazing speech on Italian efforts to document their cultural heritage. Their efforts resulted in the digitisation of over 9.2 million music manuscripts, scores and other ephemeral objects. (http://www.internetculturale.it/)

The interface operates in trilingual versions (English, French and Spanish). Here one can access (some for the very first time) manuscripts of Paisiello, Puccini and Verdi to name a few. Many can be downloaded albeit with reduced dpi. If needed for publication one can pay for high resolution. I can only imagine that researchers who did not want to have to travel all the way to tiny monasteries and dusty archives will be as struck as many of the conference delegates at what the Italians have truly achieved here!

One of the 9.2 million digital objects from the database. Here you can read in his own hand writing, Puccini sending a telegram the day after the premiere of the second revision of Madama Butterfly in Brescia describing what a 'complete triumph, 7 encores and being called up [to the stage] 30 times' (Biblioteca Statale di Lucca - ms. 3699/59)

The interface also serves as a union catalogue (SBN) amongst the institutions but I think there are some other e-resources (which I'll blog about later) that can do that and then some! There are digital cultural exhibitions (not just music) following on from physical exhibitions from various libraries and museums.

Certainly the Library of Congress, British Library and other national institutions have documented 'cultural memory' but this seems to stand out on its own. This is not to downplay the accomplishments of other institutions but their focus is towards an English-speaking world. It is refreshing to see an endeavour such as the one the Italians have built here operating in a pluralistic world. Certainly the musicological canon with its developments across the world at least begs us to think about it and take note.