Chicago's Pitchfork Music Festival

See this posting for NPR's coverage of Chicago's Pitchfork Music Festival.

Two new reference books

Here are two new books for the Music Library reference collection:

Stewart, John. Broadway Musicals, 1943-2004. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006. Call no. MUR ML102.M88 S74 2006.

This book features listings for 772 Broadway shows, with information on cast and crew, reception, and life after Broadway. It also includes a chronology of openings.
There are also helpful indexes for songs and personnel. The appendix lists basic information on an additional 2072 shows.

Victor, Adam. The Elvis Encyclopedia. New York: Overlook Duckworth, 2008. Call no. MUR ML420.P96 V53 2008.

An alphabetical treatment of a wide variety of topics in the life of Elvis Presley. This book is liberally illustrated, and many of the illustrations are in color.

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.