Dramatis Personae Archive : A History of 17th and 18th Century Performing Arts
http://www.dramatispersonaearchive.org/
This site was designed ”to be useful to researchers of theater, dance, music, French culture, and early modern history” and “serves also as a portal into the University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriott Library’s Digital Collections, which includes scanned rare books, maps, newspapers, and journals in searchable format.”–From Website.
All About Jazz
With over 15,000 profiles of jazz musicians and with news, articles, reviews, photos, and more, this is one of the leading resources on jazz on the web.
A Traditional Music Library
Thanks to Nita Dunn (Cordova) for passing along this site!
From the site: “A large traditional and folk music library of songbooks, tune-books, sheet-music, lyrics, midis, tablature, plus music reference, chord diagrams, scales and other music educational & academic reference materials.” So if you’re looking for sea shanties, nursery songs or just classic American folk music, this is the place to go.
Where the Web Archives Are
http://lifehacker.com/software/technophilia/where-the-web-archives-are-292981.php
This is a great guide from Lifehacker that describes some of the best archival resources online. I suggest that you take a look at the original post, but some of the sites they mention include:
- Mutopia – an archive of music organized by instrument, composer or style
- David Rumsey Map Collection - over 15,000 maps online
- The Rosetta Project – an online arcive of human language
- Moving Images Archive – a library of free movies, films and videos
International Music Score Library
http://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page
This wiki, from the International Music Score Library Project, offers downloadable PDFs of music scores for free. Currently over 2800 works are included. Users can browse by composer, composer’s time period or genre, or search by keyword. Users can also access the site in seven other languages.
e-Resource Guides from Iowa State
www.lib.iastate.edu/collections/eresourc/guides.html
The Iowa State University Library has created a collection of resource guides for online information for various topics.
Links are provided to pertinent websites, electronic journals, abstracts and indexes for the following topics:
Accounting; African American Studies; Agricultural Information & Studies; Agricultural & Biosystems Engineering; Agriculture; Agronomy (Plant/Soil Sciences); American Indian Studies; Animal Ecology, Fisheries and Wildlife; Animal Sciences; Anthropology and Archaeology; Architecture and Landscape Architecture; Art; Asian American Studies; Astronomy; Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Molecular Biology; Biological Sciences; Biotechnology; Chemistry; Classical Studies; Community and Regional Planning; Criminology; Diversity; Economics; Education; Engineering; Entrepreneurship; Finance; Foreign Languages and Literatures; General Humanities; General Science and Technology; General Social Sciences; Genetics, Development, and Cell Biology; Geology; Government Information; History; Horticulture; International Intergovernmental Organizations; Journalism and Mass Communication; Latino Studies; Legal Resources; Library Science; Linguistics; Literature; Materials Science; Mathematics; Medicine; Military Science; Music, Theater, and Dance; Philosophy; Physics; Plant Pathology; Political Science; Psychology; Religion; Sociology; Veterinary Medicine; Women’s Studies.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
www.rockhall.com/hof/allinductees.asp
Since the new class was announced today, what better time to point out an old favorite? This is a link to the list of all previous inductees. Select one and get a biography and timeline of their career.
The Internet Broadway Database
Are you fabulous? Can you talk Broadway and snap your wrist at the same time? Can you sing along with Julie Andrews? If not, you may want to consider spending a little time at ibdb.com. That’s the Internet Broadway Database, New York’s answer to IMBD. Here you can navigate through the history of musicals, in the very same manner that IMDB allows you to leapfrog around the world of cinema. Only its more fabulous. You can look up any performer and get a full performance history. Or, you can see how long a particular show ran and even how many times it has been performed. Look up a particular venue, and you’ll get a complete rundown of the place’s performance history. Pretty soon you’ll be talking circles around Nathan Lane himself. Now snap on that!
Gregg Newby,
History
Folkstreams
Folkstreams is a nonprofit organization which aims to preserve hard-to-find documentaries on American folk life and roots cultures and to give the films new life by streaming them on their website. Visitors to the site can view any of almost 100 films, which are organized by title, subject, region, filmmaker, etc.
Happy Viewing!
Inventions of Note: Sheet Music Collection
http://libraries.mit.edu/music/sheetmusic/
I admit this one is a bit out there, but MIT has created a collection of songs and compositions that portray technologies and inventions from around the turn of the century. Users can view the sheet music and some entries have audio files as well.
For those interested in finding more sheet music, Duke has an index to other digital collections: http://library.duke.edu/music/sheetmusic/collections.html.
Happy singing!
Museum Day
Tomorrow (9/30) is Museum Day. Sponsored by the Smithsonian, admission is free at all participating museums nationwide (which, in Memphis, include Stax, Rock & Soul and The Dixon). For a list of participating museums, click here.
A card must be presented to gain free admission. To download the card, click here.
Happy Touring!
Virtual Instrument Museum
http://learningobjects.wesleyan.edu/vim/
From Wesleyan University’s World Music Collection, this site gives information on musical instruments from around the world. Users can search by type of instrument, geographic region, or composition materials. Entries can include images, audio files, or video files.
Digital Scores from the Loeb Music Library
http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/loebmusic/collections/digital.html
This site, from Harvard’s Loeb Music Library, presents fully accessible scores from Bach, Mozart, Verdi and others. Users can zoom in and out and print out their own copies.
24-Hour Radio Playlists
I don’t know how often customers ask what song just played on the radio, but this is a very cool site! It lists the last 24 hours of music played on every station in the country. Just type in the station call letters or the local zip code to see a list of stations in the area. Clicking on a song title will direct you to iTunes, but access to the playlists is free of charge.
Harlem Renaissance Resources
From the Librarians’ Internet Index:
www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/harlem/harlem.html
“Library of Congress resources on ‘African-American expressions of writing, music, and art during the 1920s and 1930s.’ Features exhibitions, photo collections, manuscripts, sheet music, biographies, ‘Today in History’ essays, lesson plans, a selected bibliography, and more.”
Links to external resources and good websites are provided here.
