Sunday, February 23, 2014

Streaming video from Alexander Street Press

The recent (January 9, 2014) blog post on the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music ebook highlighted just one of the many exciting content enhancements to our electronic database subscription of Alexander Street Press.

Also new and noteworthy to Alexander is the inclusion of video content. This film content is located from the sfpl.org homepage → Elibrary → Videos

When you have opened this link you will find the three titles Classical Music in Video, Dance in Video and Opera in Video at the bottom of the page.

The content of these databases can also be found in our library catalog.  By limiting by "material type" you can specify that you only wish to view eVideo content.


When you view the results of a search, you can identify this content by its "eVideo" icon.
EVIDEO
Each of the three databases contains approximately 500 hours of video each totaling 1500 hours combined.  While the scope is limited when compared to the infinite offerings of user-generated sites like Youtube, the Music Online database does have strong advantages:

The digital video content has been handled in a consistent manner by Alexander Street, offering a uniformity in quality. The streaming video, which typically looks great on small devices and good on larger computer and television devices, has been compressed for fast delivery without compromising the excellent sound quality. The content itself has been carefully curated to offer the best of the best.

These databases are excellent musical discovery and learning tools for individuals, interest groups and classroom teachers. They include not only performances but also interviews with practitioners and technical instruction (Dance in Video).  For instance, here is a link to instructional videos: http://daiv.alexanderstreet.com.ezproxy.sfpl.org/search/documenttypeid/19/sortby/title

By establishing your own login and account, you can create playlists and embed links to all manner of specific musical content, including for example, an exact 28 second excerpt of a performance.

The San Francisco Symphony will be performing Mahler’s Third Symphony in this weekend. Using the Classical Music in Video database, one could watch the entire performance or could quickly share a prepared clip of the fifth movement by linking to http://muco.alexanderstreet.com.ezproxy.sfpl.org/view/1747595

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