Changes to the MPAL website

Happy August!

We’re getting ready to launch some minor changes to the MPAL web site–all of which should make it easier to get to the online tools you need. The changes are based on user feedback we’ve received in the last year. Please take a look at the screen shots below. if you have questions or comments, please let me know. The launch of the new site will occur before school starts.

New Home Page
http://www.library.illinois.edu/cms/mux/test/index.html (temporary address)

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Research Resources Page
http://www.library.illinois.edu/mux/test/research/ (temporary address)

If you used to have this page bookmarked as your primary access point to research resources, you can now link directly to the subject page of your choice. (see below)
Music Resources Page
http://www.library.illinois.edu/mux/test/research/music.html (temporary address)

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Help Using the Library
http://www.library.illinois.edu/mux/test/research/askus.html (temporary address)

The Ask Us page has been expanded.
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Looking for Smithsonian Folkways recordings?

The Smithsonian Folkways Recordings label includes important releases by Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Lead Belly, and many more. There are recordings covering the folk music of many countries, political themes such as wars and protests, as well as genres such as railroad, cowboy, and childrens’ songs.

We have many Smithsonian Folkways CDs and LPs in the Library, but we also have access to hundreds more through our online subscription to Smithsonian Global Sound.

You can search for this content by label, artist, or song or album title.

If you already know the name of the album, choose Browse > Album from the column on the left.

If you want to browse all of the recordings on the Smithsonian Folkways label, choose Browse > Label from the column on the left:
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Then, chose Smithsonian Folkways Recordings from the list:
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Next, you can get a list of the albums by title by looking at, “Narrow your search further by selecting” at the top and clicking on “Album > more…” in the pop-up window:
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Then you will see an alphabetic list of all albums on that label:

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Of course you can do this with all of the other labels represented in Smithsonian Global Sound as well.

Blogs vs Twitter

It’s been pretty quiet (dare I say dead?) here on the blog this semester. That’s because we have been using Twitter more to send you short news bits. You can see the feed from our Twitter stream on the right side of the blog. We’ll continue to use the blog when we have longer announcements or want to include pictures or screen shots to illustrate something.

New ways to get to our online music content

Now when you search our catalog for recordings, you will find records for recordings in our online audio streaming tools Classical Music Library and DRAM (Database of Recorded American Music). Just click on the “Related URL: Online access” link.
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Also, when you search Grove Music Online (via Oxford Music Online) you can click on the “Related Content” tab to find links to CML and DRAM so you can search for related audio content.
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Welcome back students and faculty

Well, you made it through the first week (and so did we!). If you are new to our library or just need a refresher, take a look at our welcome guide:http://uiuc.libguides.com/mpal

If you want to know what great new stuff we got over the summer, check out the New Titles List: http://www.library.illinois.edu/newtitles/

Need something and we don’t have it? If you can’t get it through iShare or ILL, and/or if you just really think we should have it here, suggest a purchase:http://www.library.illinois.edu/mux/services/recommend.html

If you are feeling overwhelmed and could use a little help, just ask us!

Glad you’re back!

Orchestra Musicians’ CDROM Library and CDSheetMusic content now available online via Library Music Source

Have you been using our great collection of sheet music on CDROM? Well, now it’s available to the University of Illinois Community via Library Music Source.

CD Sheet Music
Includes masterworks for piano, organ, classical guitar, strings, winds, voice, chorus and study scores. It includes:

* 35,000 pages of piano music
* 30,000 pages of vocal music (arias and art songs)
* 17,000 pages of opera vocal scores
* 21,000 pages of choral vocal scores
* 15,000 pages of violin music

Orchestra Musicians’ CD Rom Library

Including all the parts to over 600 orchestra masterworks, this is a 10-Volume set of original orchestra parts and scores for violin, viola, cello, bass, flute (piccolo), oboe, clarinets, bassoon, horn, trumpet, low brass, timpani/percussion and harp/keyboard/ miscellaneous. Note: Printing all the separate parts enables performance.

Classical Music Library recordings now findable through library catalog

You may know that we subscribe to the Classical Music Library streaming audio tool. Now when you search our online catalog, if a recording is available in CML, it will have it’s own entry.

Here’s a Boolean search for Reger and serenades, limited to “music recordings.”

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If you click on the title, you get more information about the recording.

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You can then click on the link that says “Online Access” to go to the CML tool, where you can click on tracks to play them.

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