Dedicated Listening Carrels '09

Garrison Ries - for years of dedicated service

Tiffany Gibson - for years of dedicated service

Robert Wells - for being the most likely to end up on our shelves in the future

Natalie Wren - for delving deep into the resources of the music library

Heather Jackson - for serving as the music library welcome wagon

Patrick Preacher - for setting a good example

Congratulations everyone! These signs will remain in the listening carrels for all to see from 2009-2010.

Trial of RISM

If you are a Furman faculty member or student, you can access the trial to RISM Series A/ii: Music Manuscripts After 1600. This database is an international, annotated bibliography, which aims to document the world's musical sources of manuscripts or printed music, works on music theory, and libretti. A comprehensive annotated index and guide to music manuscripts produced after 1600 containing 585,559 records by over 20,500 composers from manuscripts found in over 750 libraries and archives in 31 countries.

The trial will go through May 17, 2009. Please tell me what you think!

Categories: Music Resources, Music Trials, New Resource,

Elliott Carter - 100 Years and Still Composing

In December, Elliott Carter celebrated his 100th year with a concert at Carnegie Hall. Carter is still composing now, in fact of his body of work containing just over 130 pieces, 30 were written in the past ten years. 10 were written in 2007 alone, and 6 in 2008.

Other Resources:
Carter Centenary Web site
Contains press release, upcoming concerts, photos (including the one used above), works listings, and more detailed bibliographical information.

Elliott Carter works on DRAM (requires Furman user name and password)
112 pieces you can listen to online, spanning his composing career

Items in the Maxwell Music Library about or featuring Elliott Carter and his works
Highlights include Flawed Words and Sudden Sounds, a book-length interview with Carter about his composing done in the early 1970s, and his Collected Essays and Lectures gathered in 1997.

If you are around Wednesday, January 14, stop by for birthday cake to celebrate!

FU Community United to Save PASCAL

PASCAL is the agreement that allows our university access to myriad databases as well as providing PASCAL Delivers which many of us benefit from every day as a quicker way to request items our library does not own. The money that the State of South Carolina has put into this may soon be pulled, and therefore we may lose many important databases and services. A student created a Facebook group with more information and to show support, so if you are a fan of the resources PASCAL brings us and have a Facebook account, join today!

If you are a fan of the resources brought to us by PASCAL and want your voice to be heard outside of Facebook, you can share your story here. These will be collected and presented in front of the legislature. Act now, and save these important resources!

Exciting News for Spring Semester

The music library has been approved to be open additional hours starting January 12, the first day of classes spring semester.

Our new hours will be:

Sundays 1 pm - midnight
Mondays 8 am - midnight
Tuesdays 8 am - midnight
Wednesdays 8 am - midnight
Thursdays 8 am - midnight
Fridays 8 am - 4 pm
Saturdays 1 - 5 pm

My sincerest thanks to Provost Kazee and the Director of Libraries Janis Bandelin for approving this request, and to all of the students and faculty whose use of the library during the trial made it possible to make such a strong argument for the change. We will continue to evaluate the use of our hours throughout the year.

Extended Hours Trial - October 26-30

It has come to our attention that students want the music library to be open more, particularly Sunday afternoons and weekday evenings. We will be doing a trial of additional hours. You can vote for them by showing up during this time!

Sunday, October 26 1 pm - midnight
Monday, October 27 8 am - midnight
Tuesday, October 28 8 am - midnight
Wednesday, October 29 8 am - midnight
Thursday, October 30 8 am - midnight

The Virtual Music Library

Classes at Furman start today. If you are in Greenville, welcome back! I wanted to make sure you were aware of the resources you can access from outside of the library.

Furman subscribes to four streaming audio databases. Because we have unlimited users for each one, you can use these for course-related listening or just for fun! All require a Furman user ID and password.

African American Song
Focus: Early and historical African American song (American folk, jazz, blues, ragtime, gospel)
Also includes: Spoken word recordings, such as camp meetings, prayers, sermons, interviews, speeches; original album liner notes.

Classical Music Library
Focus: Classical music recordings spanning from ancient – 21st century compositions
Also includes: Themed playlists focusing on specific genres, moods, occasions; links to reference sources.

DRAM
Focus: CD quality recordings from New World Records, CRI, and other publishers featuring music of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Also includes: Complete liner notes and essays related to the works.

Smithsonian Global Sound
Focus: Smithsonian Folkways recordings – folk and ethnic music.
Also includes: Animal sounds, nature sounds, some spoken word; complete liner notes and album art.

Two other databases that we subscribe to offer digital scores and song texts.

IPA Source (New!)
Online library of International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcriptions and literal translations of opera arias and art song texts.

Schubertline
Instant printed sheet music of lieder, songs and arias. Users can view, play and print sheet music in any key. Includes over 2000 scores of songs by great composers.

Categories: Music Resources