In this Issue
Jongleur
Newsletter
of the Mills Music Library |
Director's Corner Happy spring. Music Library staff are spending the semester working on various grant projects including development of the Helene Stratman-Thomas website; and participation with the Center for the Study of Midwestern Cultures, the Max Kade Institute, and the Dictionary of Regional English in an IMLS grant to preserve dialect recordings. Also still in progress are the Tams-Witmark microfilming program and processing of the David Lewis Crosby collection. Another exciting project in which we are involved is the commissioning of musical compositions to celebrate the 50 th anniversary of Memorial Library. Four composers from the School of Music graduate composition program—David Dies, Scott Gendel, Alex Nohai-Seaman, and Pavel Polanco-Safadit--are in the process of creating compositions to commemorate the occasion. Mimmi Fulmer will be the featured performer at the premieres of these works in the fall. Music Library collections continue to grow with the addition of major gifts and purchases. Some 40,000-50,000 ethnic 78 rpms and LPs were received in December and January from the estate of Ford Porter, a Milwaukee record collector. Feel free to join us this summer for the grand unpacking. New among our online resources is the JSTOR Music Collection, which contains the nearly complete back runs of 31 titles dedicated to scholarly research and theory in the field of music. It is an international collection that includes journals published in the US , the UK , the Netherlands , Croatia , Hungary , Germany and France . Most titles are complete until ca. 1998 and will have moving wall coverage, meaning that each year, the next most recent year will be added. The JSTOR collection, along with IIMP and other full text products, will provide complete online coverage of the journals deemed to be the most important to music research. We expect to be ready to use persistent links to JSTOR articles in our electronic reserves services for the fall semester. We have also begun a 15-month trial subscription to The Classical Music Library, an online music streaming service. Initially, we contracted for three simultaneous users only but we will study use and may increase the number during the period. While this is an exciting development, the sound quality of Classical's files is far inferior to that of our locally developed electronic reserves. I do not perceive this service at present to substitute for course listening available through My UW and although the Classical Music Library provides the opportunity to create class listening lists, please do not use this option at this time. A subscription to the Naxos Music Library, another online service, will be active shortly and will permit more simultaneous users and a broader range of recordings, including those from the Naxos world music and jazz collections. Library plans for the upcoming months include the replacement of our vintage orange chairs with models more tasteful and comfortable, courtesy of the Parents’ Fund; the addition of yet more desperately needed shelving in the far south stacks; and completion of the star-crossed compact shelving installation in the audio facility. The Music Library staff continue to work towards improving our services, collections, and facilities, and always welcome your input. We extend to you our best wishes for the remainder of the semester and the summer. |