The top 12 things you should know about MPAL

Whether you are new to the University of Illinois or a seasoned grad student, here are a few things you may not know about the Music and Performing Arts Library.

Print, audio/visual, online…you name it, we’ve got it
1. Our collections and resources cover all types of music, dance, and theatre from all over the world.
2. We have books, scores, CDs, and DVDs that you can check out, as well as LPs, reference materials, and journals that you can use in the library
3. Our online resources are available to you 24/7 when you login with your NetID
4. You can request things from other libraries or request that we purchase something

Technology
1. You can print from our computers or via wireless from your laptop
2. We have two scanners that are free to use
3. We will soon have iPads for loan

We have friendly and knowledgeable staff who want to help you
1. See our Ask Us page for ways to get help
2. We have online help guides for music, dance, and theatre classes and research topics
3. You can make personal research appointments with either of the librarians to get help with your paper or research project.

Extras
1. We have lots of study space at big tables near big windows
2. We make monthly guides to go with events at the Krannert Center

BONUS!
We have listening rooms and listening carrels for you to use when listening to or watching any of the media in our collections. Ask for a key at the Circulation Desk.

To keep up with MPAL news, follow us on Twitter @mpalillinois

New online video resources for dance and opera

MPAL has two new video resources available: Dance in Video and Opera in Video.

Dance in Video

Performances and documentaries, searchable and browseable by artist, genre, and material type.

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Opera in Video

Performances, interviews, and documentaries searchable and browseable

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These new resources join Theatre in Video in our list of research resources available to U of I patrons.

Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive

Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive is a new online video collection of Festival artists from 1937 to today.

“Dance Interactive lets you dive in to video clips of iconic Jacob’s Pillow performances by Kyle Abraham, Nina Ananiashvili, Savion Glover, Cynthia Gregory, Rennie Harris, Judith Jamison, Bill T. Jones, and many others. Insightful information about the artists complements each video and there’s even a game in which you can test your dance knowledge! Even better, the collection includes visually stunning high definition (HD) clips of recent performances and will continue to grow as more videos are added.

These videos, once available only to people who could travel to the Jacob’s Pillow Archives in Becket, Massachusetts, are now accessible to the nearly two billion people with internet access worldwide.”

You can browse for videos by artist, genre, or era. Genres include ballet, modern, contemporary, tap, cultural, and more.

More about Jacob’s Pillow.

Additional full text options in IIMP and IIPA

There are now more full text link options for the International Index to Music Periodicals (IIMP) and the International Index to the Performing Arts (IIPA) databases. If the full text of an article is available directly from one of those sources you’ll still see “Full text” or “Full text-PDF” links. If the article is potentially available from another online source you’ll see the blue “Discover UIUC Full Text Linking” button. If you click on it you will be given other options to locate the item online or request it via InterLibrary Loan.

If you have any questions about this, just stop by the MPAL and let us know!

Diaghilev Centenary

Mastermind of modern ballet

By Clement Crisp (FT.com)
Published: January 2 2009 22:31

There will be a great deal written and, especially, shown in exhibition this year about Sergey Pavlovich Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes – not that there has not been a Diaghilev industry beavering away at exploring and discussing his achievements during the past half-century in rather exhausting fashion. But there will be more, much more, since May 18 marks the centenary of that first evening of ballets presented by Diaghilev in Paris, and with it the first shoots of balletic rebirth in western Europe.