David Wood, Music Library
John Gibbs, Music Listening Center
For 45 years, the Music Library has collected books, scores and performing parts, facsimiles of manuscripts and early editions, recordings, ear-training software, and music education materials. Special collections include recordings of the music of many cultures, early editions of opera scores, the Eric Offenbacher collection of recordings of Mozart's vocal music, and the Hazel Kinscella collection of early American hymnals.
These music sources are now significantly enhanced by electronic products. The Music Library Reference Desk home page, created by John Gibbs, serves as the gateway to a vast array of musical information, which would not have been possible to access just a few years ago.
Planning to visit Amsterdam in early February and want to know if any operas are being performed then? The Opera Schedule Server allows searching on titles, casts and performance dates in opera houses all over the world. Netherlands Opera is mounting Wagner's Parsifal on February 3rd. You can also find the address of the ticket office and the price of tickets.
Or you might want to know the broadcast schedule for the Metropolitan Opera's coming season. The Texaco-Metropolitan Opera page provides this information, along with casts, production overviews, and plot synopses. Discovering that the February 8 broadcast will be Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, you can then query the Opera Schedule Server and learn when other performances of this opera will take place at the Met.
By far the most popular source on the Music Library's Web page is the page for Ethnomusicology, Folk Music and World Music. The site provides access to online journals, organizations, and bibliographical and discographical sources, and to Web sites throughout the world devoted to the music of all cultures.
Also on the Music Library's home page is a Web site devoted to the Offenbacher Mozart Collection, a collection of recordings of Mozart's vocal music by the great singers of the early twentieth century. This collection was donated by Dr. Eric Offenbacher, a Seattle collector and benefactor. The Web site provides catalog access to the complete collection. Users can call up color images of selected recording labels in the collection, and audio samples from five of the recordings.
Music Library patrons often need recent death dates of composers and musicians, both for publications and for inclusion in concert programs. Washington University's Gaylord Music Library Necrology is an excellent source for the years 1980 to date.
In addition to the Web resources, the Music Library provides other electronic products. As part of their educational program, music students need to build a knowledge of the physical characteristics and sounds of musical instruments, both standard and less commonly encountered. The CD-ROM product Microsoft Musical Instruments provides an audio-visual guide to musical instruments in all of the world's musical cultures. Students can view an image of the instrument, read a description of it, and listen to a performance. This product was developed locally with input from students and graduates of the School of Music's Ethnomusicology program.
One of the Music Library's special services is a sound restoration program, using equipment jointly purchased by the Libraries and the School of Music. This service was originally conceived in order to tape and restore the sound on early recordings in the collections. However, since it is the only service of its kind in the area, it has been used for other, more unusual purposes: to assist the Seattle Police to bring out background noise on a 911 tape of an assault case, and to assist a professor of history by making audible voices that were distant from the microphone in a Franklin Delano Roosevelt Cabinet Meeting.
Although the Music Library has extended its reference service by developing its Reference Service home page, the staff still maintains a program of traditional library assistance, including locating specific pieces of music in collections; offering bibliographic and research instruction; furnishing a reserve service for books, scores and recordings; and providing a listening facility for its large collection of recordings.