FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Alexander Street Press and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) today announced an agreement as part of the MLA’s Reference Online programme for English public libraries. The agreement will give participating libraries access for their users to Alexander Street’s acclaimed Music Online: Listening, and Music Online: Reference at discounted rates.

Music Online: Listening offers a vast, easy-to-use electronic archive of streaming audio performances of Alexander Street’s unrivalled collections of classical, jazz, blues, gospel, folk, and world music. Music Online: Reference offers a comprehensive selection of music reference materials—from classical music scores and song sheets to essential music dictionaries, encyclopedias, biographies, anthologies, and bibliographies as well as liner notes, discographies, chronologies, and critical texts. Taken as a whole, the two resources offer a fully integrated learning and listening experience that anyone can use for a broad range of purposes.  For example a user could listen to a Mozart symphony while following the score, or reading the composer’s biography, or articles about the symphony and the period in which it was written. Accessible at the library and remotely over the Internet, users can also simply listen—or, for a nominal fee, download—tracks for replay on an MP3 player.

Of their partnership with the MLA, Andrew Hall, Managing Director of Alexander Street Press UK said, “What the MLA is doing is enormously important. Partnerships like this one, brokered by the MLA between publishers who meet their high standards and England’s Public Library Authorities will greatly speed the delivery of the best resources to library users country-wide. And the MLA’s foresight in emphasizing online resources is key to the digital future of England’s public libraries.”

Says the MLA’s Susi Woodhouse, “We’re very pleased to be working with Alexander Street as part of our Reference Online initiative which has already seen libraries make savings of over £3.5M.  The Music Online collections are exactly the kind of resources we hoped to make available to the public through England’s libraries when the Reference Online programme was established. By collaborating in this fashion and negotiating on behalf of libraries, we can streamline the procurement process and establish best practices for delivering authoritative online resources at the most affordable price.”

Please email Hayley Harris (hharris@alexanderstreet.com), Alexander Street’s Sales Director for the UK and Ireland, if you would like additional information about Alexander Street’s Music Online products.

About Alexander Street Press

Alexander Street Press is a global leading publisher of electronic online databases, publishing more than 40 collections with a focus on building “best of breed” collections across the humanities, music (listening and reference), and social sciences. Founded in May 2000, in Alexandria, Virginia, U.S. with the goal of publishing large-scale digital collections of exceptional quality in the humanities and social sciences, Alexander Street Press products are available world-wide through a growing network of international distributors and agents. For more information, visit www.alexanderstreet.com

About the MLA

The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council works with the nine regional agencies in the MLA Partnership to improve people’s lives by building knowledge, supporting learning, inspiring creativity and celebrating identity. The Partnership acts collectively for the benefit of the sector and the public, leading the transformation of museums, libraries and archives for the future. For more information, visit www.mla.gov.uk