Alexander Street Pess | November 08 Product Updates Bulletin

Important News

Pulitzer Prize-winner Art Spiegelman will be our speaker at the Alexander Street ALA Midwinter Customer Appreciation Breakfast in Denver this January. We’re already at 75% capacity, so if you haven’t sent in your RSVP yet, please be sure to do so as soon as you can!

In other ALA news, The History Channel® is sending lots of giveaways for us to hand out in celebration of the launch of American History in Video, which features hundreds of hours of History Channel video content together with rare archival newsreel and other contemporaneous footage. We’ll also be doing demos and a drawing for a free, one-year subscription to American History in Video—so be sure you make your way to the new Alexander Street island at booth # 1924.

Have you ever wished that you could just get quick, immediate access to new online collections without the rigmarole of requesting access credentials or contacting a sales agent? With our new Sneak Peek Subscription you can do just that. Enter your email address here, and you will automatically receive a username and password good for 48 hours every time we launch a new collection. Easy!

Release 5 of The Digital Karl Barth Library is now live. This release includes seven new volumes—specifically, volumes 37 through 43—of Karl Barth's collected works. Read more in the Product Updates section below.

Check out our blogs to keep up on what’s new at Alexander Street in-between releases of this newsletter and to learn how other libraries—like the Wellesley College library—are making use of and promoting Alexander Street collections like Opera in Video.

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Product Updates

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. For additional information please visit our Web site at http://alexanderstreet.com or email marketing@alexanderstreet.com

◊ Music and Performing Arts ◊

African American Music Reference: Recent additions include six new titles totaling 1,339 pages. To browse newly added content, visit the freely accessible “What’s New” section of this collection online at http://aamr.alexanderstreet.com/WhatsNew. As of this update there are 2,672 essays and images from 68 titles and a total of more than 16,848 pages in African American Music Reference. New titles include:
- The American Negro and His Amazing Music by Tim Dennison, Sr. (Vantage Press, 1963)
- The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture by Bakari Kitwana (Basic Civitas Books, 2002)
- The History of the Blues by Francis Davis (Hyperion, 1995)
- Mellows: A Chronicle of Unknown Singers by Robert Emmet Kennedy (Albert & Charles Boni, Inc., 1925)
- Riding on a Blue Note: Jazz and American Pop by Gary Giddins (Oxford University Press, 1981)
- Roosevelt's Blues: African-American Blues and Gospel Songs on FDR by Guido Van Rijn (University Press of Mississippi, 1997)

American Song: We’ve added 45 albums (549 tracks) to American Song in the last month, taking the total for this collection up to 1,015 albums (6,996 tracks). New tracks (from Fantasy Records, American Music Preservation Recordings, and King Records), include country, do-wop, rock and roll, spoken word, and sacred music. Sample albums include: The Best of William Billings; Celestial Praises: Music of the Shakers (with interviews); Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg; plus multiple albums from Credence Clearwater Revival, Roy Orbison, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Patsy Cline. To browse the complete list of new titles, visit the freely accessible “What’s New” section of this collection online at http://amso.alexanderstreet.com/WhatsNew

Classical Music Library: Please note that we are in the process of migrating all Classical Music Library subscribers over to a new platform at http://clmu.alexanderstreet.com. You will not need to do anything to make this happen (your links and bookmarks will automatically forward to the new site in January), but you may want to read the Transition Guidelines that describe how and when this migration will take place. In the interim, all new content feeds will be added only to the new site, and your users will have access to that content in January.

This month we’ve released 2,009 new tracks to Classical Music Library including: 20th century compositions from New Albion Records; the works of Tallis Scholars from Gimell Records; and Clear Note Publications’ classical guitar repertoire. Also new to the collection are works from composers Karlheinz Stockhausen, Somei Satoh, Paul Dresher, Morton Feldman, Thomas Weelkes, Orlando Gibbons, Thomas Tompkins, Schubert, and many more. To browse the complete list of new tracks, visit the freely accessible “What’s New” section of this collection online at http://clmu.alexanderstreet.com/WhatsNew. This continuously growing collection now totals 3,628 albums—more than 55,903 tracks in all.

Classical Scores Library: The addition of 3,607 scores (44,564 pages) takes the total count of this collection to 8,103 scores (173,930 pages). Central to this release is the addition of a wealth of scores originally published by University Music Editions, including Berlioz, Chopin, Cornelius, Glinka, Gretry, Loewe, Marenzio, de Lassus, Palestrina, Rameau, Rossini, Schein, Schubert, Schuetz, Sweelinck, Victoria—84 composers in all. Of the new works added, 1,996 come from the Renaissance period. Also included are 407 Baroque, 377 Classical, 812 Romantic, and two twentieth century scores.

Dance in Video: The addition of 26 videos (39 titles) this month takes this collection up to a total of 94 videos totaling 141 hours of streaming dance performance, documentary, and instructional content. The collection will contain 500 hours at completion. Newly added titles include: interviews with Anna Sokolow and Steve Paxton; tap instructional video by Brenda Bufalino; documentaries featuring Betty Jones, Doris Humphrey, Erick Hawkins, and ballerina Karen Kain as well as a documentary on the making of Eisenstein's Carmen Ballet. Newly added performances include works for camera choreographed by Molissa Fenley, Anna Halprin, and Eiko Otake. To browse the complete list of new works, visit the freely accessible “What’s New” section of this collection online at http://daiv.alexanderstreet.com/WhatsNew.

Opera in Video features one new title, Beethoven's Fidelio, performed by the Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (1990). The collection now totals 42 videos (84 hours); at completion, it will contain more than 500 hours of streaming video footage. Visit http://opiv.alexanderstreet.com/WhatsNew to keep abreast of new content as it is added.

Contemporary World Music: The addition of 36 new albums (414 tracks) from Concord Reocrds, Fantasy Jazz, INEDIT, Nimbus, and Pan Records takes this collection of sounds from every region and continent to a total of 1,012 albums (13,502 tracks). New content includes latin jazz, contemporary folk, flamenco, and electronica. Sample albums include: Mongo Santamaria: Afro Blue - The Picante Collection; A Night With Poncho Sanchez Live: Bailar; Cante Gitano: Gypsy Flamenco from Andalucia; and Bulgarie: Chants De Nedelino - Tradition des Rhodopes. To browse the complete list of new tracks, visit the freely accessible “What’s New” section of this collection online at http://womu.alexanderstreet.com/WhatsNew.

◊ Religion and Theology ◊

The Digital Karl Barth Library: Release 5 is now live and includes seven new volumes—specifically, volumes 37 through 43—of Karl Barth's collected works. Now at a total of 89 volumes, this growing online collection includes: the English translation of Barth’s magnum opus, The Church Dogmatics, in its entirety together with the complete original German version, Die kirchliche Dogmatik; the first 43 volumes of Barth's Gesamtausgabe, which includes hundreds of letters, sermons, lectures, conversations, and academic writings; and, unique to this collection, seven additional German works that have not yet been published as part of the Gesamtausgabe and English translations of thirteen important texts by Barth. To learn more about The Digital Karl Barth Library visit http://alexanderstreet.com/products/bart.htm or to request a trial, email sales@alexanderstreet.com.

MARC Records Now Available

Due to technical problems, we haven’t been able to release any new MARC records since September. We hope to have the problem resolved soon. Check our MARC records download page for updates over the next few weeks, and we hope to have a new batch of updates to report in December!

Reviews We've Received

Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000
The Charleston Advisor, October 2008
The Charleston Advisor gave Women and Social Movements a 4 ½-star rating (on a five-star scale. As far as we know, they’ve never actually given anyone a perfect 5-star rating, so we’re extremely proud of this!) If you have a subscription to Charleston Advisor, you can read the complete review here.

Irish Women Poets of the Romantic Period
CHOICE, November 2008
“Some of these works are available elsewhere . . . but none of these databases has the comprehensiveness, access points, or biographical and critical essays IWP offers. . . . The display of texts is superb. . . . Invaluable for collections supporting strong programs in Romanticism or women’s studies. Summing Up: Highly recommended.”

North American Indian Thought and Culture
CHOICE, November 2008
“Simple to navigate. . . . The information provided is abundant and in-depth (references for further reading are often included). . . . Overall the database is comprehensive and valuable for anyone interested in learning more about the rich Native cultures of North America. Summing Up: Essential. All levels.”

Counseling and Psychotherapy Transcripts, Client Narratives, and Reference Works
CHOICE, November 2008
“This is a great resource. . . . Summing Up: Essential.”

Library Journal’s new “E-Reference Ratings” feature includes a number of Alexander Street collections and is a handy resource besides.

Conferences We're Attending

We will be attending the following conferences in months ahead, and hope you’ll stop by our booth if you’re there!

Musicological Society of Australia National Conference: December 4-7, 2008; Melbourne, Australia
American Historical Association Annual Meeting: January 2-6, 2009; New York, NY; Booth #238
ALIA Information Online 2009: January 20-22, 2009; Sydney, Australia; Booth #58
American Library Association Midwinter Meeting: January 23-26, 2009, Denver, CO;
- Stop by our new island at booth #1924
- Find us in the Comics Pavilion at booth #1153

To see a complete list of the conferences we plan to attend, visit http://alexanderstreet.com/events/index.htm

Scheduled Maintenance

Alexander Street will be doing scheduled maintenance across all collections on DECEMBER 10, 2008. In general, our maintenance process is designed to ensure minimal disruption, and we don’t anticipate significant downtime or access interruptions in excess of more than a few minutes per collection. In the event that downtime is prolonged for any reason, we will post alerts to each affected collection, and we will send an email to your technical services contact.

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.

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