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September 2008
This is the second issue of Alexander Street’s monthly bulletin covering:
• important news
• product updates
• MARC record availability
• reviews we’ve received
• conferences we’re attending
• scheduled maintenance dates and anticipated impact on your access
Follow the link from any of the headlines below to read the complete story, or go to http://alexanderstreet.com/events/SEP08bulletin.htm to read the bulletin in full.
To make sure you keep receiving these updates, please subscribe here.
If you do not wish to receive these updates in the future, please unsubscribe using the link at the bottom of this email.
Important News
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Product Buttons
Just released are buttons for each of our music collections. Simply hyperlink to the collection and embed them in your music and performing arts gateway page, feature them on your library home page and blog or in an email promoting the collection, or let faculty use them in course Web sites to help direct your users to the following collections of streaming music and full-text music references.
Buttons are currently available for each of the following collections:
- African American Music
- African American Music Reference
- American Song
- Classical Music Library
- Classical Music Reference Library
- Classical Scores Library
- Contemporary World Music
- The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Online
- Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries®
View and download all the buttons at http://www.alexanderstreet.com/resources/product_buttons.htm.
Additional product buttons are on the way, so be sure to check back periodically.
Early Adopter Discounts
Alexander Street offers
generous Early Adopter Discounts for outright purchases of
all collections not yet published. To receive more
information, email
sales@alexanderstreet.com
Sneak Peek, 48-Hour Trials of New Alexander Street
Collections
We now offer regular SNEAK PEEK trials to current customers
for every new collection as it’s launched. If you would like
to automatically receive Sneak Peek 48-hour Free Trial
Access to each Alexander Street collection as it’s released,
sign up here.
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Product Updates
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To see a list of recent updates—in content, functionality, or technical features—for any of the Alexander Street collections listed below, simply follow the link. If a collection isn’t listed, there have been no updates over the past month.
◊ Music and Performing
Arts ◊
- African American Music Reference This collection now contains 2,535 essays and images from 63 sources, for a total of over 16,059 pages. Just added this past month are:
- Like Young: Jazz and Pop, Youth and Middle and Middle Age, by Francis Davis; Da Capo Press, 2001
- Louis: The Louis Armstrong Story, 1900-1971, by John James Chilton; Little, Brown, & Company, 1971
- Rolling Along in Song: A Chronological Survey of American Negro Music, by J. Rosamond Johnson, 1937, Publisher
- Wishing on the Moon: The Life and Times of Billie Holiday, by Donald Clarke; Da Capo Press, 2000
To see a complete listing of newly added content, visit http://aamr.alexanderstreet.com/WhatsNew This area can be browsed by anyone, whether you are a subscriber or not.)
- Classical Scores Library We’ve just added 429 new scores totaling 11,145 pages, bringing the collection to 3,587 scores and 124,446 pages. To see a complete listing of newly added content, visit the “What’s New” tab of Classical Scores Library at http://shmu.alexanderstreet.com/WhatsNew (This area can be browsed by anyone, whether you are a subscriber or not.) New content includes Beethoven, Bach, and Handel scores from Breitkopf and Härtel and the Bach Gesellschaft Edition, Leipzig.
- The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Online - JUST RELAUNCHED
We included this announcement in last month’s alert, but it’s super
important, so we’re including it again! We’ve just re-launched this
collection. To see the press release, which describes all of the new
functionality and features, go to http://alexanderstreet.com/pressroom/releases/GLNDrelaunch.htm Included now are:
- hundreds
of audio samples from around the world (originally published in the
print version as companion CD-ROM and now available online together
with the full-text for the first time).
- comprehensive
browse features for a wide variety of terms, including genre, cultural
group, musical subject, instrument, person, ensemble, and place.
- Web
2.0 tools that let users create, annotate, and share playlists—with
content from anywhere on the Web. This is a particularly useful tool
for course instructors, who can create a course-dedicated playlist and
include Garland content as
well as content found elsewhere in other e-publications or on the free
Web—recordings, photos, videos—anything with a URL. Annotations let
instructors tell students what to watch for. Playlists can be embedded
right in a course syllabus or Web site.
- American Song August and early September additions to this collection (from Arhoolie Records, Fantasy Records, Rebel Records, and Stax Records) have taken total content up to 16,447 tracks / 970 albums. Sample album titles include:
- Corridos y Tragedias de la Frontera; Arhoolie Records, 1937
- Credence Clearwater Revival: Hot Stuff; Fantasy Records, 1995
- David Davis and the Warrior River Boys: Troubled Times; Rebel Records, 2006
- Jimmy Gaudreau and Moondi Klein: 2:10 Train; Rebel Records, 2008
- John Starling and Carolina Star: Slidin’ Home; Rebel Records, 2007
- Kenny and Amanda Smith Band: Tell Someone; Rebel Records, 2006
- True Bluegrass Gospel; Rebel Records, 2007
- True Bluegrass Instrumentals; Rebel Records, 2007
To see a complete listing of new content, visit the “What’s New” tab of American Song at http://amso.alexanderstreet.com/WhatsNew (This area of the collection can be freely browsed whether you are a subscriber or not.)
- Contemporary World Music We’ve recently added 67 albums / 650 tracks to this collection for a grand total of 979 albums and 13,166 tracks. To see a complete listing of new content, visit the “What’s New” tab of Contemporary World Music at http://womu.alexanderstreet.com/WhatsNew (This area of the collection can be freely browsed whether you are a subscriber or not.) New content includes a wide range of Latin and Latin jazz, dance, salsa, and jazz fusion titles from Concord Records and Heads Up Records.
- Dance in Video 21 new videos from publishers including Creative Arts Television, Aviva Films, and the American Tap Dance Orchestra. To see a complete list of works added, visit the “What’s New” tab of Dance in Video at http://daiv.alexanderstreet.com/WhatsNew These releases include two new documentaries, one chronicling Brenda Bufalino and the American Tap Dance Orchestra (“Someone Stole the Baby), and the other chronicling tappers Honi Coles and Cholly Atkins (“Over the Top to Bebop”). Additional titles include:
- Brenda Bufalino’s Where the Action Is, Tap Technique
- Anthony Tudor’s one-act ballet, featured in Romeo and Juliet, Three Versions, 1957
- A Tribute to Lester Horton from Aviva Films
- Paul Draper on Tap, 1980, a combination of documentary and performance work published by Creative Arts Television
- Iris Mabry, 1962 from Creative Arts Television
- Yurkio Kikuchi’s Yuriko: Creation of a Dance
- Dances of Bali; Search for Ecstasy: Moroccan Dance; and Dancing from Ceylon, all from Aviva Films
- The Art of the Ballerina, an instructional video, and Four Classic Pas de Deux from Creative Arts Television
- Instructional videos from the New York High School of Performing Arts
- Jazz Dance of Matt Madox
◊ History ◊
- The Gilded Age The addition of 5,000 new pages, 10 video / audio recordings, and two new critical documentary essays takes the total count of this collection to 39,000 (of a targeted 50,000) total pages. New content includes:
- Adventures in Apache Country
- A Report Concerning the Colored Women of the South
- Looking Backward
- How the Other Half Lives
- Video recording of Patricia Ann Schecter’s discussion of Ida B., Wells and Michael Kazin’s discussion of the 1896 presidential election.
- Secondary essays include, “Populism and the People’s Party During the Gilded Age,” and “The Presidential Campaign of 1896.”
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Social Science ◊
- Counseling and Psychotherapy Transcripts, Client Narratives, and Reference Works Added content includes over 2,600 pages of new material, putting the complete collection at approximately 45,300 pages of material total. New content includes:
- Journey Out of Nowhere, by Nancy Covert Smith
- Fragments from the Diary of a Madman, by Pawl Cienin
- Varieties of Psychopathological Experience, by Fred A. Mettler
- The APSAC Handbook of Child Maltreatment, Second Edition, by E. B. Myers, et al
◊ Literature ◊
- Black Short Fiction and Folklore The addition of 22 new texts takes this collection to a total of approximately 6,400 short stories and more than 47,000 pages. New content includes:
- Goodbye, Sweetwater: New and Selected Stories, by Henry Dumas
- Three Short Stories by Femi Euba
- Five issues of the French-language, Haitian journal Optique
- Black Women Writers The following new titles take the total of this collection to over 44,000 pages of poetry and prose:
- I Am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing Across Sexualities, by Audre Lorde
- Queen of the Ebony Isle, by Colleen Johnson McElroy
- Water Street, by Crystal Wilkinson
- The River’s Song, by Jacqueline Bishop
- Caribbean Literature Over 3,700 new pages of what is now a total of 46,000 pages were added in August, including:
- Berbice Crossing and Discussing Columbus, by Cyril Dabydeen
- Sounds and Echoes, by Ishaq Imruh Bakari
- Snowscape with Signature, by Abdur-Rahman Slade
- Watercourse, by Anthony Kellman
- South and Southeast Asian Literature New content released in August includes:
- Measures of Home, by Leela Gandhi
- Goddy Tales, by Shinie Antony
- The Mapmakers of Spitalfields, by Syed Manzurul Islam
- The Silver Pilgrimage, by Madavayya Anantanarayanan
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MARC Records Now Available
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Alexander Street provides free, downloadable MARC records for its collections.
All records are generic in style, prepared to a standard agreed on by an advisory group of customer libraries. Libraries are free to modify the records to meet their in-house standard. Records may also be shared with a customer's cataloging service agency without special permission
To see a complete list of the MARC records currently available for Alexander Street collections, visit our MARC Records Download page (where you will also find a schedule of planned future releases).
This month, we’ve released 4 batches of book-level records and 2 new product-level records.
Records just released include book-level records for:
- Social Theory: there are 194 MARC records in this set, which includes sources that were released prior to August 2008. Supplemental sets will be released as more sources are added to this collection.
- North American Indian Drama: There are 93 records in this set. Supplemental sets will be posted as more sources are added to this collection.
- North American Women’s Drama: 1517 records have been uploaded, including all of the plays planned for the collection. No supplemental sets are planned for this collection.
- Counseling and Psychotherapy Transcripts, Client Narratives, and Reference Works: There are 169 records in this set, which includes sources released prior to June 2008. Supplemental sets will be added as new sources are added to the collection.
We’ve also just released the following product-level records. Note that these records do not provide access to the individual works contained in these collections, but they do provide access to each collection’s home page.
- Images of the American Civil War: Photographs, Posters, and Ephemera
- Twentieth Century Advice Literature: North American Guides on Race, Gender, Sex, and the Family
Bookmark this URL and check back frequently (we’ll let you know monthly what records we’ve added): http://marc.alexanderstreet.com The next MARC set expected to release is for Latin American Women Writers in early October. |
Reviews We've Received
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American Film Scripts
CHOICE, October 2008
http://www.cro2.org/default.aspx?page=reviewdisplay&pid=3406361
“The elegant design and well-constructed, thoroughly indexed access affords users maximum value whether they are serious film and literary scholars or casual movie buffs. Among the site’s best options is its varied indexing, allowing users to access scripts by title, genre (every conceivable style is featured, from dramas to musicals), filmmaker, and in many cases theme. . . . This easy-to-use site will prove useful to a wide audience. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Users at all levels.”
Black Drama: Second Edition
The Charleston Advisor, July 2008
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/charleston/chadv/2008/00000010/00000001/art00006
4 1/2 stars (out of 5)
“Black Drama (second edition) combines its exceptional content with a well-organized and easy-to-use interface that allows the user not only to read a rare or unpublished play, but also to review many extrinsic elements that accompanied the play and its product. . . . All details . . . are conveniently interconnected and meticulously indexed. . . . The interface surprisingly facilitates the discovery of the exceptional content and complements the painstakingly detailed indexing. . . . All libraries will find this resource extremely valuable but academic libraries with strong theater departments will benefit most from this exclusive content.”
American Song
CHOICE, October 2008
http://www.cro2.org/default.aspx?page=reviewdisplay&pid=3406491
“Highly recommended. All users, all levels.”
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Conferences We're Attending
We will be attending the following conferences in October and November, and hope you’ll stop by our booth if you’re there!
- Society for Ethnomusicology 53rd Annual Conference: October 25-28, 2008; Middletown, CT
- Library and Information Association Aotearoa Conference 2008: November 2-5, 2008; Auckland, New Zealand
- XXVIII Annual Charleston Conference: November 5-8, 2008; Charleston, SC
- American Musicological Society and Society for Music Theory Annual Meeting: November 6-9, 2008; Nashville, TN
To see a complete list of the conferences we plan to attend, visit http://alexanderstreet.com/events/index.htm
Scheduled Maintenance
Please note that Alexander Street will be doing scheduled maintenance across all collections on OCTOBER 9, 2008.
At this time, we do not anticipate any downtime or interruptions to your access. In the event that this changes, we will post alerts on each affected collection.
NOTE: If you would like to receive an email alert in the event of any Alexander Street system downtime (or if you would like to designate someone else to receive such alerts), please enter your contact information here, under Technical Services contact.
Are there things you think we’re not covering in this bulletin that we should or that you’d like to see? Please let us know by emailing us at marketing@alexanderstreet.com.
Remember, we’re maintaining an archive of the Alexander Street Product Updates Bulletin, so if you miss an issue, you can simply access it on our Web site here.
If you do not wish to receive future issues of this newsletter, please unsubscribe using the link at the bottom of this email.
To be sure that you keep receiving this newsletter, or to sign up someone else at your library, please subscribe now.
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