Word on the Street

The July issue of Music Media Monthly is live. A monthly publication edited by Rick Anderson, this blog brings you reviews of the best recordings, books, videos, and Web sites for music lovers.

Editor Rick Anderson writes: "You thought July was hot enough already? Well, you haven’t experienced hot until you’ve checked out the offerings in this month’s issue of Music Media Monthly. Break out the sunblock, because Anne Shelley is filling you in on a brilliant Aaron Copland documentary and an equally glorious video examination of the art of the thematic variation (as performed by Danie Barenboim, Andras Schiff and Yefim Bronfman). Steve Dankner discusses a blistering new book on Liszt’s transcriptions and a collection of studies on Ravel.
Gene Hyde brings us word of a steaming-hot website for drummers and lovers of drumming in all musical genres. And I discuss several blazingly
great new releases from such tropical climes as Jamaica (Roy Ellis), North Carolina (Don Dixon and Marti Jones), er, New York (Paul Motian),
and, um, Germany (Echo Beach). Put on your hippest sunglasses, break out your most styling parasol, and enjoy! Read it here.

Alexander Street in Information Today

Earlier this month, at the ALA Midwinter meeting, Information Today caught up with us! They talked to us about some of our most exciting recent developments and what we've got in store for 2011. Check out what they had to say: Streaming Video and Music Developments at Alexander Street Press.

We've joined forces with Filmakers Library!

Filmakers Library has been bringing high-quality, issue-based documentaries to the education market for more than forty years. Some of its award-winning titles include Original Intent: The Battle for America; Who Killed Vincent Chin?; Prison Lullabies; The Danish Solution: The Rescue of the Jews in Denmark; and Muslims in Love. And earlier this month, we made an exciting announcement: Alexander Street has acquired Filmakers Library.

A little later this year, we'll be bringing you their entire library as a subscription-based streaming video database called Filmakers Library Online, and making it possible for libraries to order and instantly stream individual Filmakers Library films.

For more information, check out the full press release here.

Article on QR codes in College & Research Library News

College & Research Library News has just published their November 2010 issue including an article featuring QR codes from Alexander Street Press.

"QR codes and academic libraries: Reaching mobile users," by Robin Ashford (George Fox University librarian and "Librarian by Design" blogger), calls Alexander Street "an innovative library vendor," quotes our President, Stephen Rhind-Tutt, and includes a long explanation of how our Send-to-Mobile functionality works alongside a Music Online screenshot.

The cover of the C&RLN print issue is a QR code, which links to a delicious page with lots of resources on QR codes.

Read the article at http://crln.acrl.org/content/71/10/526.full!

Expanded partnership with NINES

In an ongoing effort to improve scholarly access to digital humanities resources, Alexander Street Press has partnered with The Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship (NINES) and its sister organization, 18thConnect: Eighteenth-Century Scholarship Online, to enable cross-search access to all relevant eighteenth- and nineteenth-century content from Alexander Street online collections, including, most recently, The Romantic Era Redefined.

In addition to The Romantic Era Redefined, other Alexander Street Press collections indexed in the NINES and 18thConnect networks include The American Civil War: Letters and Diaries, Irish Women Poets of the Romantic Period, and Scottish Women Poets of the Romantic Period.

For more information, please read the press release.

If you'd like to request free trial access to The Romantic Era Redefined, or a price quote for your library, please email [email protected].

We're hiring

Looking to join our team? Alexander Street is looking for qualified candidates to fill a number of roles in various departments. See a complete list of openings here, and submit your résumé today.

Scheduled maintenance on Saturday, July 24

On Saturday, July 24, 2010, we will be performing scheduled maintenance on all Alexander Street collections. While we do not expect any major service outages, access may be disrupted sporadically between the hours of 8 AM and 4 PM EDT / UTC-4.

We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause. As always, we'll try to keep any periods of downtime to a minimum, but please plan accordingly.

If you have any questions prior to the scheduled maintenance, or if you experience problems after the times listed above, please contact Customer Support. If you are the technical contact at your library and would like to receive email notifications about future service interruptions, please sign up here.

Streaming music collections go mobile

We've just enabled mobile access to ALL of our streaming music collections, making it possible for patrons at subscribing libraries to listen using internet-enabled smart phones and other mobile devices. Mobile access options include QR codes (like the one below), automatic email or SMS text delivery, and navigating to a mobile-friendly URL. Every recording, album, and playlist can now be accessed on-the-go.

The QR code above can be scanned with with your smart phone, and will connect you directly to an e-album of music from the movie Pride & Prejudice. The e-album can then be streamed on your mobile device through August 31, 2010. QR readers are readily available as free or inexpensive add-on applications, and many mobile phones come with QR readers pre-installed. If your 3G mobile device is connected to the web but does not have a camera, you can simply go to http://goasp.it/austen to stream the e-album. To see other working examples of QR codes, check out the Resource Shelf.

Later in 2010, Alexander Street video collections will be streamed to mobile devices. For more information on mobile access, read the press release.

Three new streaming video collections

Alexander Street is launching three new streaming video collections by the end of 2010!

Education in Video is the first online collection of streaming video developed specifically for training and developing teachers. More than 1,000 video titles totaling 750+ hours of teaching demonstrations, lectures, documentaries, and primary-source footage of students and teachers in actual classrooms give your education students a way to observe the intricacies of behavior, tone, facial expression, and body language that define effective teaching styles. The collection's wealth of course, study, and discussion guides; assessment checklists; and themed playlists give your education faculty ready-to-use teaching tools.

World History in Video: English-Language Documentaries will give faculty, students, and history lovers access to more than 1,750 important, critically acclaimed documentaries from filmmakers worldwide. A rich survey of human history from the earliest civilizations to the fall of the Berlin Wall, World History in Video is truly global in scope, covering Africa and the Americas, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Oceania. Its unparalleled geographical and chronological coverage delivers the sights, sounds, artifacts, and histories from around the world straight to your desktop.

Counseling and Therapy in Video: Volume II both updates and expands upon the first collection, with special emphasis on contemporary topics such as family therapy, child therapy, geriatric therapy, play therapy, weight control and eating disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, sex therapy, culturally sensitive therapy, and cognitive-behavioral therapy.

The second volume of Alexander Street Press’s award-winning Counseling and Therapy in Video will feature more than 300 additional hours of training videos, reenactments, and footage of actual therapy sessions conducted by renowned psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers.

Sign up now to receive Sneak Peek access to these collections as soon as they are launched. You can also read the press release here.

If you'd like more information, or if you'd like to request a trial or price quote for your library, please email [email protected].

Advisory Roundtables at ALA

If you're heading to ALA in Washington, D.C., why not give our editors 45 minutes of your time at one of our advisory roundtable sessions? Our editors host these informal gatherings in order to get feedback and suggestions on new and forthcoming collections. We're hosting five different sessions, and all are conveniently located at the convention center or in ALA hotels no more than 2 blocks away. In exchange for your time we'll give you the opportunity to win a one-year subscription.

Join us at one or more of the following:

• Alexander Street’s Comics and Graphic Novels Roundtable
• What’s New in Alexander Street Video
• “On the Couch” with Alexander Street: Counseling and Therapy Advisory Roundtable
• Going Global: Alexander Street’s History in Video Advisory Roundtable
• Alexander Street’s Music Advisory Roundtable

You can learn more about all five session and RSVP here.

And don't forget to stop by booth #3813 in the exhibit hall!