Music librarians with shrinking acquisitions budgets, crowded shelves, and pressure to create mor... more Music librarians with shrinking acquisitions budgets, crowded shelves, and pressure to create more student study space face fundamental questions: How do we sustain the quality of the music collection with limited funds? How can we be proactive with collection development when so much is beyond our control? Houman and Carolyn will present survey results that capture a snapshot of the current state of music acquisition funds and collection building activities in Canadian academic libraries. In particular, they will cover how these funds are organized, where they are being spent, and how fluctuations in institutional support for library collections may impact music collection-building mandates across Canada. Since the fall in the Canadian dollar and the lower purchasing power of the library, this survey may be used to develop contingency measures to examine potential changes in the area of music collection development. Jan and Kevin will review the pros and cons of two potential respo...
metoperafamily.orgIt was on the night of October 22, 1883 that the curtain rose on the very first... more metoperafamily.orgIt was on the night of October 22, 1883 that the curtain rose on the very first performance of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. One hundred and twenty five years later (to the day, as though to help celebrate the occasion), the Met unveiled an exciting tool on its website with which the public could access a generous number of performances from the Met's long and rich history. Met Player (reviewed in Journal of Singing 66, no. 2 [November/December 2009]) began by serving up 170 audio and video recordings of past Met performances, with the promise of more to come. Five years later, the number of performances available through that service has climbed above 400 with no sign of abating. In 2012 it expanded its scope with the launch of an iPad app, at which time it was renamed Met Opera On Demand.This is a service to which one subscribes annually, semiannually, or monthly, and there also are provisions that allow one to pay an a la carte fee to access a particular performance for a limited period of time. One can even sample the service for a week, completely free of charge. Of course, one needs to be properly equipped, technically, to access the service to optimal effect. The Met recommends a 2.0 GHz Dual Core processor, 1 GB of memory, 128 MB of video RAM, and Adobe Flash Player. (If all of that seems as incomprehensible as the plot to Der Ring des Nibelungen, fear not. There are all kinds of avenues by which these kinds of matters can be addressed and your questions can be answered.) If all of that is in order, then it's simply a matter of going to the Met site, signing in, clicking on , and then finding the link to Opera On Demand. From that page, you can access the complete catalog of audio and video performances that are available. There is a separate icon of each individual performance, and by simply moving the cursor over the icon, one can view a list of the principal cast members and conductor, a very brief plot summary, and a few words explaining the historic and/or artistic significance of the performance at hand. With a simple click on the performance begins in a matter of seconds.The playback mechanism itself is a model of ingenuity and imagination; clearly a great deal of thought was given into making the experience both straightforward and satisfying. If one wants simply to listen to or watch the performance from start to finish, without interruptions or repetitions, one can just let it play without having to do anything at all. If one is interested in sampling particular moments from that performance, there is an index that roughly corresponds to the tracks one would find on a compact disk. An opera of fairly modest length like Tosca will have about thirty such chapters, while a longer work such as Gotterdammerung will have almost fifty. One can summon up any particular chapter of a performance simply by scrolling to it and clicking on it once it appears. The labeling of the chapters appears to be consistent across various performances of a given opera, which can be very helpful if there are particular moments you want to find. Most of the time a standout aria such as Tosca's "Vissi d'arte" will be clearly labeled as the title of that chapter. On the other hand, the first of Sieglinde's great arias, "Der Manner Sippe" from the first act of Die Walkure, is actually found within the tenth chapter labeled "Schlafts du, Gast." The fact that it is always found there, whether the performance is from 1940 or 2010, is an immense help to the average user of Met On Demand. And once a given chapter is playing, a time bar at the bottom of the screen allows you to jump instantly to any particular point in the chapter. As for the video performances, one can choose to view the image on a relatively small screen within the screen, which yields the clearest possible image and leaves the chapter scroll and all of the playback controls (play, pause, advance, repeat) in view. …
Music librarians with shrinking acquisitions budgets, crowded shelves, and pressure to create mor... more Music librarians with shrinking acquisitions budgets, crowded shelves, and pressure to create more student study space face fundamental questions: How do we sustain the quality of the music collection with limited funds? How can we be proactive with collection development when so much is beyond our control? Houman and Carolyn will present survey results that capture a snapshot of the current state of music acquisition funds and collection building activities in Canadian academic libraries. In particular, they will cover how these funds are organized, where they are being spent, and how fluctuations in institutional support for library collections may impact music collection-building mandates across Canada. Since the fall in the Canadian dollar and the lower purchasing power of the library, this survey may be used to develop contingency measures to examine potential changes in the area of music collection development. Jan and Kevin will review the pros and cons of two potential respo...
metoperafamily.orgIt was on the night of October 22, 1883 that the curtain rose on the very first... more metoperafamily.orgIt was on the night of October 22, 1883 that the curtain rose on the very first performance of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. One hundred and twenty five years later (to the day, as though to help celebrate the occasion), the Met unveiled an exciting tool on its website with which the public could access a generous number of performances from the Met's long and rich history. Met Player (reviewed in Journal of Singing 66, no. 2 [November/December 2009]) began by serving up 170 audio and video recordings of past Met performances, with the promise of more to come. Five years later, the number of performances available through that service has climbed above 400 with no sign of abating. In 2012 it expanded its scope with the launch of an iPad app, at which time it was renamed Met Opera On Demand.This is a service to which one subscribes annually, semiannually, or monthly, and there also are provisions that allow one to pay an a la carte fee to access a particular performance for a limited period of time. One can even sample the service for a week, completely free of charge. Of course, one needs to be properly equipped, technically, to access the service to optimal effect. The Met recommends a 2.0 GHz Dual Core processor, 1 GB of memory, 128 MB of video RAM, and Adobe Flash Player. (If all of that seems as incomprehensible as the plot to Der Ring des Nibelungen, fear not. There are all kinds of avenues by which these kinds of matters can be addressed and your questions can be answered.) If all of that is in order, then it's simply a matter of going to the Met site, signing in, clicking on , and then finding the link to Opera On Demand. From that page, you can access the complete catalog of audio and video performances that are available. There is a separate icon of each individual performance, and by simply moving the cursor over the icon, one can view a list of the principal cast members and conductor, a very brief plot summary, and a few words explaining the historic and/or artistic significance of the performance at hand. With a simple click on the performance begins in a matter of seconds.The playback mechanism itself is a model of ingenuity and imagination; clearly a great deal of thought was given into making the experience both straightforward and satisfying. If one wants simply to listen to or watch the performance from start to finish, without interruptions or repetitions, one can just let it play without having to do anything at all. If one is interested in sampling particular moments from that performance, there is an index that roughly corresponds to the tracks one would find on a compact disk. An opera of fairly modest length like Tosca will have about thirty such chapters, while a longer work such as Gotterdammerung will have almost fifty. One can summon up any particular chapter of a performance simply by scrolling to it and clicking on it once it appears. The labeling of the chapters appears to be consistent across various performances of a given opera, which can be very helpful if there are particular moments you want to find. Most of the time a standout aria such as Tosca's "Vissi d'arte" will be clearly labeled as the title of that chapter. On the other hand, the first of Sieglinde's great arias, "Der Manner Sippe" from the first act of Die Walkure, is actually found within the tenth chapter labeled "Schlafts du, Gast." The fact that it is always found there, whether the performance is from 1940 or 2010, is an immense help to the average user of Met On Demand. And once a given chapter is playing, a time bar at the bottom of the screen allows you to jump instantly to any particular point in the chapter. As for the video performances, one can choose to view the image on a relatively small screen within the screen, which yields the clearest possible image and leaves the chapter scroll and all of the playback controls (play, pause, advance, repeat) in view. …
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