Wozworld’s Weblog

Beginning on Wednesday, October 8, I will be on-site at Center for the Arts to assist you in research tasks for dance, music, and theatre topics.  From noon to 1:30 each Wednesday, I will be armed with my trusty laptop, an armload of Wozworld Quick Guides to Research, and other tools to assist faculty and students with research needs.  Look for me somewhere in the Commons area as I set up my laptop on a table.  No appointments are necessary for assistance, and I will have a table top sign on display.  Stop by to get advice, sound off, or just chat about performing arts.  Click here for a link to the poster that will soon begin popping up in Center for the Arts: http://pages.towson.edu/lwoznick/docs/poster.pdf

While poking around the IBTD this morning, beyond the large contingent of full text journal articles delivered, with this latest release of EBSCO upgrades, there are now full text books available as well.  Titles that are available in IBTD full text run the gamut of types and topics of performance subjects, including music, specifically operas.  A quick sampling of full text titles in theater included The Oxford Companion to American Theatre (2004), Drama: A Guide to the Study of Plays (2000), Acting: Advanced Techniques for the Actor, Director & Teacher (2005). 

In music, I found libretti for a number of major operas from Aida to Cosi Fan Tutte, as well as a wide variety of Opera Mini-Guides produced by Opera Journeys which gave plot summaries, lists of characters and some analysis of the operas.  What this means is that IBTD is now indexing a number of full text books, chapter by chapter, in a PDF format.  You can search for specific book titles alphabetically by clicking on the Publications link in the database and see an A to Z listing of sources, which now includes books. 

I have not noticed the other EBSCO databases (Humanities Abstracts, RILM, and Music Index Online) used in performing arts research delivering such full text chapters in books, but I thought I would investigate.  Needless to say, I was hoping to find the same type of A to Z title arrangement of full text sources in these three databases, but this is not the case.  I called EBSCO to ask why these databases do not show a Publications link.  I was told that the actual database owners are the only ones who can supply such a list – EBSCO is just the provider of the interface.  If the database owners don’t present a list of full text books included to EBSCO, then the list is not available  – and this is the case with Humanities Abstracts,  RILM and Music Index Online.  Bummer.

It is interesting to point out to music students, however, that the above mentioned full text resources are available in IBTD, so they should not overlook searching for operatic or performance topics in this database, especially as it is not one that music students will turn to first when searching for this type of material.

This week, researchers in France discovered a fragment of a composition in the hand of WA Mozart.  The link below includes the newstory as it was posted on MSNBC.com.   Once you open the link, the story will load in the center of the page, but on the right is a video viewer to see coverage of  the press conference where the piece was unveiled.  Be forewarned that before the MSNBC clip airs, there is a 39 second Valtrex ad that you will have to sit through before you can see the newsstory.  Why the combination of Mozart and Valtrex is beyond me, but there are some nice shots of the score in a plexiglass holder.  I am sure more news about this will follow in subsequent weeks. 

Here is the link for the news-story and the clip: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26772717/

As many of you may realize, on Monday, Naxos Music Library unveiled their new user interface.  While it looks a little snazzier than the old view, with this new updated look came some access issues.  Throughout this week, I have been receiving reports of problems when users either on or off campus attempt to open the database.  This week, on two separate occasions, the opening screens failed to display, and my computer sat for a number of minutes trying to pull open the introductory database screen.  On other occasions, the player was streaming sound, but when I went to select another album, the player froze.  Even shutting down my IE browser and opening another window did not allow me to successfully open the databse.  Other users in close proximity to my machine were able to view the database with no problem.

I emailed our Naxos rep and told her about these issues.  She confirmed that the problems we are seeing are related to the new interface.  Why this interface could not have been changed and tested before the semester for most schools began is a moot point, but she forwarded all of my emails describing our problems to the IT chair at Naxos.  She apologized for the stability issues and assured me that they are being addressed by the IT team on a daily basis.

If you continue to have Naxos issues, please drop me an email so I can forward a description to our Naxos rep.

Thanks to the wizardry of Kay Kazinski, Cook Library Technology Coordinator, my instructional website has a new sleek look and improved funcationality.  Gone is the text heavy appearance of most of the pages and the need to scroll endlessly to find a desired document.  Most pages have links front and center with navigation links on both the left and right sides of the page.  Help guides and pathfinders are easily sorted by subject with new “Getting Started in …” pages to direct users in the fine art of performing arts research.  The most used links are still present with all class documents still attached to each library session.  There is a Google “search this site” box which will be functional in the next few days.  Class related documents are updated usually the week before or of the class that is being taught.  In the event that a document that you held near and dear to your heart is missing, please email me and I will make sure that you have a copy, or that the document reappears on the site.

I am still in the process of moving content in all sections to have a uniform appearance.  Likewise, the “Getting Started in” guide sections are not finished, so please check back in the next few weeks to see content in those areas expanded.  My new Fall newsletters will imminently be posted under the “For Faculty” link.  In the past, I have printed hard copies of the newsletter but beginning with this semester, those newsletters will appear on my website.

Kudos to my colleague, Kay Kazinski, who has managed to work with my endless requests for refinements/enhancements.  Her insightful suggestions and mastery of web coding and design enabled the website to go live just in time for my first instructional sessions of the semester.  Without her work, the new website would just be a distant dream.  To check out my site, click here: http://pages.towson.edu/lwoznick/.

After a long examination of the status of our Collected Editions/Complete Works/Monuments of Music sets (the M2 and M3 complete composer score sets), we have decided that these score sets will no longer circulate outside of the library.  This summer, I completed an exhaustive survey and inventory of these score sets and found that we have a number of volumes that are missing and some are checked out and overdue, lost, or lost and paid for by the borrower in a billing system that does not allow us to charge borrowers the actual cost for these scores.  To replace some of the volumes that were lost in circulation or lost and paid  will be almost impossible, and Dr. Anthony and I would like to protect the scores in these sets to make them available to all TU faculty and students.  Individual volumes of sets like the Neue Mozart Ausgabe (which, by the way, is now available online) can cost more than $200 these days, and in some cases, borrowers have left the university and the state and taken these volumes with them.

While this decision may please some music folks, it will, undoubtedly make others unhappy.  Almost all of the USMAI schools in the system keep these sets as reference items, so we are not renegades in the library world for making this decision.  A year ago, we changed the status of these sets so that they only circulated to TU faculty and students.  Unfortunately, we have still lost volumes and have had confrontations with some borrowers to return these volumes when they were overdue.   These  sets will now be used only in the library.  The library has photocopiers on all floors that you may use to copy works for study purposes.  If you have a departmental Copico copier card, you may bring that with you to make copies as photocopying in the library is 10 cents per page.  If faculty have a need that goes beyond this in house use policy, they should contact me to have an exception made for them to take one of these volumes out of the library for a brief period of time to their departmental offices or studios. This type of exception will be granted on a case by case basis. 

Dr. Anthony and I will go about replacing missing and lost volumes of these sets as the library budget will allow.  If it makes anyone feel better, we are pleased to announce that we are initiating two new standing orders for collected editions sets this semester:  The Collected Works of C.P.E. Bach and The Complete Words of Robert Schumann.  Once these volumes actually begin to arrive in the library, I will post news about them.

For more information about the awesome change in Grove Music Online, please refer to an earlier post about the July make-over that OUP gave their online product.  After careful consideration, Cook Library has renamed the database in its database lineup to reflect the new title of the online product.  The Subject Guide to Music on the Cook Library web page as well as the alphabetical listing of databases will now list the database set simply as Oxford Music Online.  The Subject Guide to Music has a note next to the title that states “includes Grove Music Online” for you fans who are holding on to the title of the product you held near and dear.  The only place where this could cause a problem is in the alphabetical lineup of databases by title.  You will now need to remember to go to the “O” listing to find Oxford Music Online instead of the “G” listing for Grove’s.

I am happy to announce two new databases for music research that are now appearing on Cook Library’s Subject Gateway for Music.  The African American Music Reference Center provides full text articles from reference sources such as the International Dictionary of Black Composers to complete texts of books such as Giddens’ Celebrating Bird.  Articles include photos, playbills, and musical excerpts with topics ranging from minstrelsy to rap to ragtime.  In addition to biographical encyclopedia entries and essays, there are descriptions of musical instruments, interviews, lyrics, liner notes, and images.  Menus provide easy browsing by genre and material type, or you may use a basic or advanced search to specify the type of document you are seeking.  TU students and faculty have unlimited simultaneous user access for both on and off campus.

The Music Index Online now provides indexing of music journals from 1976 to the present through an EBSCO interface that will be familiar to many.  Both basic and advanced search capabilities are present with additional limit features to narrow results.  There is some full text delivered directly in the database, with more available through the Find It button on most entries.  Any articles not available through the Find It option can be ordered through ILLiad/Interlibrary Loan.  See an earlier post on this blog about EBSCO interface updates.  If you are familiar with searching RILM, searching the Music Index Online will be a snap.  TU has unlimited simultaneous users both on and off campus.