Holiday break

Hey kids,

Just wanted to let you know the blog won't be updated as much while we're closed for holiday break. We'll be back on January 4th with regular posts.

Until then, have a safe & happy holiday, and we'll see you next year!

Holiday music

Just in time for wrapping presents or having your friends over for a holiday party, we've made a playlist for the holiday season, and it's available on Naxos Music Library. You must be a USC student, faculty, or staff to access. If you're off campus, click here for access.

Guest post

Here's a guest post from Music Library student employee Kyle M.:

While seemingly frivolous lawsuit(s), the inmates have a point…it probably isn’t the most wonderful time of the year for them.

Do you like lists? Here are 24 different lists regarding the best music of 2009.







I really, really love a capella music and it has been great fun to see a mainstream show featuring voices alone without instruments doing some really cool things. Check it out!

AP music-related news

Some interesting news came across the Associated Press wire that relates to music:

House honors Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue"
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Fifty years after jazz legend Miles Davis recorded "Kind of Blue," the House voted Tuesday to honor the landmark album's contribution to the genre.

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2010 New Orleans Jazz Fest lineup announced
NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Van the Man and The Queen of Soul are headlining next year's New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.

Joining Van Morrison and Aretha Franklin will be Pearl Jam, making its inaugural appearance at the fest, as well as Lionel Richie and actor Steve Martin, who plays banjo. [South Carolina native] Darius Rucker, former Hootie and the Blowfish front man-turned-country award-winning singer, is also slated to appear.

Marking its 41st year, the festival is scheduled for the weekends of April 23-25 and April 29-May 2 and features hundreds of acts in genres ranging from pop, rock and gospel to R&B, jazz and zydeco.

--On a personal note, who's going with me?!?! ;-)

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Arts survey finds drop in movie, museum attendance
NEW YORK (AP) -- If you haven't gone to a movie, jazz concert or an art exhibit in recent years, you are in steadily growing company.

A new study from the National Endowment for the Arts finds a notable decline in theater, museum and concert attendance and other "benchmark" cultural activities between 2002 and 2008 for adults 18 and older, and a sharper fall from 25 years ago. The drop was for virtually all art forms and for virtually all age groups and levels of education.

Billboard's #1 Song

This site lists the #1 song according to Billboard Magazine.

For Monday, December 14:

2009- "Empire State of Mind" by Jay-Z + Alicia Keys
1999- "Smooth" by Santana featuring Rob Thomas
1989- "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel
1979- "Babe" by Styx
1969- "Leaving on a Jet Plane" by Peter, Paul & Mary
1959- "Heartaches by the Number" by Guy Mitchell
1949- "Mule Train" by Frankie Laine
1939- "Scatter-Brain" by Frankie Masters
1929- "Tip Toe Through the Tulips" by Nick Lucas

1919- "Oh! What a Pal Was Mary" by Henry Burr
1909- "Put On Your Old Gray Bonnet" by Haydn Quartet
1899- "I'd Leave My Happy Home for You" by Arthur Collins
1891- "Drill, Ye Terriers, Drill" by George J. Gaskin

Timeline of Secret Copyright Treaty

A fun read that came across twitter from Boing Boing:

The ACTA Timeline on Dipity.

Looking for that perfect gift?

Need a great gift for the aspiring musician in your life?
How about private lessons?
The School of Music's Community Music School offers private lessons to students of all ages.

So this holiday season, do the world a favor and invest in lessons. After all, no one wants to go on Ellen and make a fool of themselves by singing live, do they?

Librarystuff.net

Congrats again to our Music Librarian for Audio & Digital Services, Ashlie Conway, for having her card catalog event photos picked up by librarystuff.net!

Thoughts about how libraries can use social media

This is a slideshow put together by librarian Adam Rogers of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Library Lens On New Technologies

View more presentations from Adam Rogers.

Mildly Attractive Men of SLIS Calendar is here!

We got a copy of the new 2010 "Mildly Attractive Men of SLIS" calendar and we can't contain our excitement!



Each year since its beginning, we've had a Music Library student employee included in the calendar. This year, our employee Jeremy was lucky enough to make the cover as a mild-mannered, comic book-reading Clark Kent/Superman!

You can order a copy online, or come by the library and get one directly from Jeremy and skip the shipping fees!

2010's web trends to watch

CNN just listed next year's web trends to watch, and I have to say, I'm pretty disappointed.

Real time events and news, geolocation information, augmented reality, curation of content, cloud computing, social gaming, and watching tv online are things that many of us are participating in in 2009. The only news here is that those of us who aren't participating in this probably will start in 2010.

For those of you who'd like to start before the rush, here's a primer:

*For real time events and news,

join Twitter or Facebook. Lots of news sites such as CNN, MSNBC, and others are offering this as well. Watch for live streaming events.

*For geolocation,

try Brightkite, Loopt, Foursquare, Gowalla, Google Lattitude, or Twitter. There are many others out there, so try some!

*Augmented reality is best understood by watching a video. Here's one of the best informational videos I've seen to describe it.
Stay tuned until 2:29 to see an example:


*Curation of Content is available.

Sites like flickr have this. Our Music LibGuides are an example. As more people turn to the internet for information, more people will want to "curate" the information so that you can find what you need quickly.

*Cloud computing is also very popular right now. It basically is a secure online place to store your born-digital documents, photos, videos, etc. You can keep these items private, or send a link to share them with others! If you don't currently have a Dropbox, or Skydrive (and even Google docs, wave and calendar could be considered this to some extent...), then get an account and send your stuff up to the cloud!

*Social gaming is nothing new for those of us who grew up with an NES or Playstation. Today's gaming, however, has definitely evolved. You can play Wii with anyone from around the world who also owns a Wii. On Facebook, you can play Farmtown or Mafia Wars with your parents or high school choir director. On XBox, you can play and see your friends even if you live across continents!

*Online videos and tvI hope by now we've all watched a video on YouTube, or Hulu. One upcoming website you should try out is Clicker. It brings you the best video content from all over the web, and my favorite thing it features is retro cartoons from when I was a kid! [Advice to anyone who watched the cartoon She-Ra as a kid- don't go back and watch it now. Trust me on this one.]

Hope you've enjoyed this post, and as always, if you have any questions, let us know!

Need a grant?

This site has a great list of grant opportunities for musicians, actors, composers, poets, musical ensembles, and filmmakers.

Recital

Come out and support Music Library employee Andre North tomorrow afternoon at 4 PM. He'll be giving his senior saxophone recital in the recital hall. For more information, visit the School of Music's event calendar.

What we're working on Wednesday!

I missed posting yesterday, so I'll catch you up today.

We're still working on updating the container list for the Claude Casey Collection.

Yesterday we also went to Thomas Cooper Library to photograph the entries in the "What Can You Make with Catalog Cards?" contest. They are OUTSTANDING!


The biggest entry (in size) is the Cooper Trooper.

Besides that, we worked on a bunch of reference questions, and compiled some library statistics. Did you know that during the week before Thanksgiving break, the Music Library employees were asked over 150 reference questions? Cool, huh?

Be sure to check out our hours page. We've got the hours through the end of Spring, 2010 posted.

Good luck on your juries and final exams! Let us know if we can help!