Chicago Symphony Orchestra to give special concert tonight

See this article on PlaybillArts, announcing a special concert by the CSO tonight at Ravinia commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Burnham Plan.

New York Times article on textbook rental

In the course of my blog reading, I came across an article by Miguel Helft in the New York Times on the Chegg textbook rental service, posted on the Library Stuff blog. This looks like it could be an economical solution for students.

Electronic sheet music is now available for Kindle

Users of Amazon's Kindle can now download and read sheet music on the device. See related posts from Amazon Kindle's blog and the Library Stuff blog.

New way to access Naxos Music Library

The University Libraries loaded bibliographic records for thousands of musical sound recordings available through Naxos Music Library. This means that if you search the NIU library catalog for sound recordings, recordings from Naxos Music Library might appear in your list of results.

To illustrate, I searched our catalog for Georges Enesco's Romanian Rhapsody no. 1 (in our new catalog system, I used an advanced search and entered "enesco" as "author name" in the first search box, and "romanian rhapsody 1," selected all of these, and searched as "keyword anywhere" in the second search box) and I saw the list of results shown in the first picture on this blog post. When I clicked on the circled result, Rhapsody, I saw the page in the second picture. Note the links in the catalog record that will take you to Naxos Music Library. You must be on campus, or connected to the campus network through a virtual private network (you must be affiliated with the university to connect from off campus), to listen to Naxos Music Library.

Not every recording available through Naxos Music Library will be in the NIU Library catalog, but several thousand of them are. Please search Naxos Music Library directly for complete access to its content.

If you have any questions on using Naxos Music Library, please contact me at mduffyiv@niu.edu or via telephone at 753-9839.

New York Philharmonic Historical Data now available online

The New York Philharmonic has launched a new Web site that will allow users to search for historical data about the orchestra. You can read Daniel J. Wakin's article in the New York Times, "Philharmonic Puts Its History by the Numbers Online," here. Thanks to Kirstin Dougan of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for bringing attention to this article by posting about it as well.

Summer Hours

The Music Library began its Summer semester schedule yesterday. From then until August 7, the Music Library will be open Monday through Wednesday from 8:00 a.m. until 7:30 p.m. and on Thursday from 8:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. The Music Library will be closed Friday through Sunday.

During the week of August 10, the Music Library will be open from 8:00 a.m. until 12 noon and from 1 p.m. until 5 p.m., Monday through Thursday; and during the week of August 17, the Music Library will be open from 8:00 a.m. until 12 noon and from 1 p.m. until 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. Fall semester hours will resume on Monday, August 24.

New Reference Tool for Orchestral Pops Music

The Music Library recently received Orchestral "Pops" Music: A Handbook, by Lucy Manning (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2009). It uses the same format as the familiar orchestral music resource, Orchestral Music: A Handbook, 4th ed., by David Daniels. Works are listed in alphabetical order by composer. Five appendixes index the contents by "instrumentation," "duration," "themes," "title," and "publishers and sources," respectively. This resource can be found in the Music Library reference collection under call no. MUR ML128.O5 M36 2009.