January 2017 Archives

The Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies has been recording testimonies of survivors, witnesses, and bystanders of the Holocaust since 1979, when the project started as a grassroots effort here in New Haven. It currently holds more than 4,500 testimonies, comprising more than 10,000 hours of videotape, recorded by Yale and more than 30 affiliates worldwide.



Recently, the archive completed a number of important milestones including the digitization of its collection, the development of a digital access system, and the launch of a partner site program that provides remote access to testimonies at universities and research institutes.

Please join us for a presentation on Wednesday, February 8 at 3:30 pm in the Sterling Memorial Library Lecture Hall by the archive's director, Stephen Naron, who will discuss the history and recent developments of the archive, and some new initiatives underway to encourage use of the collection.
 

Books new to the Arts Library's general collection are featured to the left of the main desk on the first floor. We invite you to take a seat and explore! Circulating items are available to check out if you find something of interest. Staff members are available at the main desk for questions -- or email us.

Interested in learning how to build a database or code with R? Apply for a Digital Humanities Training Scholarship! Yale  undergraduates, graduate students, and librarians are eligible to apply. These scholarships support participation in week-long DH workshops.

For more information, visit our Training Scholarships page. Not sure which workshop is right for you, check out our Off-Campus Workshops page or send us an email at dhlab@yale.edu.

The staff of Oral History of American Music (OHAM) have recently conducted interviews with Bright Sheng, John Luther Adams, Jabala Billy Hart, and Toshiko Akiyoshi.  In the next few months, interviews are planned with Guy Klucevsek, David Lang, and first year composition students at the Yale School of Music. Additionally, OHAM staff released two new videos on their YouTube channel: "OHAM Remembers Pauline Oliveros" including historical footage from a 1983 interview; and “Reaction to Breaking the Waves, an opera by Missy Mazzoli.”  This video included excerpts from a recent OHAM interview and videos from the opera, all complemented by reflections from Fjola Evans, a student composer who attended the premiere. Finally, the German radio station Deutschlandfunk, produces a series called “Voices of America.”  On January 13, 2017, they aired the premiere of their hour-long program devoted to Oral History of American Music and its founder, Vivian Perlis. 

The Music Library subscribes to many databases that bring full-text books and articles, streaming audio, and streaming video to your computer, anywhere in the world, 24/7. 

Berliner Philharmoniker Digital Concert Hall is available once again to Yale students, faculty, and staff.  Access is by IP address: Yale users must connect first from on campus or through VPN and create a login.  Once registered, Yale users can login from anywhere on supported devices and apps, which include iOS and Android smartphones and tablets. 

medici.tv has a monthly newsletter of new offerings.  Subscribe by writing to medici.tv. Newly added recordings include Arthur Rubinstein performing Chopin from 1968 and a master class with William Christie and Paul Agnew. The latest live broadcast was of the premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Remembering, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle.

Met Opera on Demand has recently added some classic performances:  Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier from 1982, with Kiri Te Kanawa, Tatiana Troyanos, Judith Blegen, Kurt Moll and Luciano Pavarotti, directed by James Levine; and two radio performances of Beethoven’s Fidelio (1993) and Verdi’s I Vespri Siciliani (2004).

For an overview of music databases and ways to search the library’s collections, see Music Research @ Yale; or go straight to a list of databases.

The library has a trial subscription through February 3^rd to Routledge Handbooks Online, including 557 book chapters pertaining to music.  Please explore and send any comments you have about this database to Suzanne or Jonathan.

The library has recently subscribed to The Economist, Drama Online, Kanopy Streaming Video Service of feature films and documentaries, and the complete content of 19^th Century Masterfile with details on more than 20 million documents and 6500 periodicals, including arts titles. The index entries include links to full-text documents in HathiTrust and American Memory.

Finally, Ebrary has a new name and new links: ProQuest Ebook Central.  For updated links, search for ebooks in Orbis or Quicksearch.

Several archival collections were processed this fall, and are open for research. These include the papers of two award-winning producers of Broadway hits and Classical performances: Thomas Z. Shepard and Goddard Lieberson, as well as the papers of Slam Stewart, prominent American jazz bassist. In addition, two YSM-related collections were processed: The Papers of Ruth Bracher, class of ’21, and the Papers of Donald Currier, professor of piano from 1951-1989.

The Gilmore Music Library's renovation project, which started in June 2016, is now complete. The renovated space features:

• A brand new circulation desk area, complete with new comfortable seating, new locations for our computer workstations and self-service printing and scanning facilities, and a new office for Suzanne Lovejoy, Music Librarian for Reference and Instruction.   
• Two seminar rooms on the second floor that include large tables, pianos and whiteboards (both plain and stave). These rooms will also soon be installed with state of the art audiovisual systems, that will allow for laptops to be plugged into a large 80" wall mounted monitor along with a high definition audio system. Additional playback capabilities in these rooms will include, audiocassette, Blu-ray, compact disc, DVD, VHS, and vinyl.  
• Additional large study tables on the first floor.
• A new front entrance leading from the corridor that now connects the recently opened York Street entrance to Sterling Memorial Library and the main Nave. 
• A new exhibition area, outside the front entrance to the Music Library, that provides the ability to display both physical and digital music special collection materials, including, for the first time, audio and video items that will be displayed on two large monitors positioned above new custom built exhibit cases. Our inaugural exhibit, A Riff on Ruff: Yale’s Jazz Ambassador to the World, opens January 27th.

Stop by to see all of this for yourself during our regular hours! Additionally, please join us for an Open House, Jan 27th from 11am-1.30pm, to celebrate with library staff, the launch of the renovated Music Library. Refreshments will be served and tours of the new spaces will be given on an ad-hoc basis. 

Following a successful pilot in Fall 2016 of Avalon Media System, a replacement to Variations that is now being used to stream audio e-reserves at the Gilmore Music Library, the Music Library and Yale Library IT are pleased to announce the launch of a full production version of the system, which has been upgraded to the latest release and includes many new features.   

Avalon offers mediated streaming access (requiring a Yale Net ID and password) to sound recordings on compact disc or older formats in the Gilmore Music Library that are not currently available via one of the many audio databases that Yale University Libraries subscribes to, such as Naxos Music Library or Music Online. Avalon is already scheduled to be used for a number of classes in the Department of Music, School of Music and Theater Studies program during the Spring semester, including Twentieth-Century Music: Analysis and Model Composition taught by Prof. Michael Friedmann and Stephen Sondheim and the American Musical Theater Tradition taught by Prof. Daniel Egan. 

The upgraded version of Avalon includes:

• The ability to connect to recordings off-campus, using a Yale login
• Access via mobile devices

It you are interested in setting up audio e-reserves for a class you are teaching, please contact Jonathan Manton, Music Librarian for Access Services.