New Database of Newspapers Added to Our Collection

The Academy Library has just added a new database to its collections.  “America’s Historical Newspapers, 1690 – 2000”  is a NewsBank, Inc. database that includes primary source articles covering topics in government, politics, social issues, culture, literature, discoveries, inventions and more from hundreds of primary sources. Includes news and eyewitness accounts of events, issues and daily life in the colonies or during the Revolutionary War, westward expansion, the Civil War, Reconstruction, industrialization, the Progressive Era, World War I, and other eras. Also included are illustrations, advertisements, classifieds, birth and marriage announcements, obituaries, stories about historic people and other articles exactly as they appeared in print. Let us know what you think!

Introducing ARTstor

The Academy Library is pleased to announce a new subscription to ARTstor, the latest addition to the Library’s database holdings. ARTstor is an online database featuring over 1.2 million images from a variety of museum collections, professional photographers, libraries, scholars, photo archives, artists, and artists’ estates. The contents are arranged by geographic location, collection title, and “image groups” sharing similar attributes. The ARTstor learning environment includes tools for helping students and teachers browse for images on sample topics, such as Maps and Geography and Native American Studies, and study these images closely. For example, the database features a “zoom tool” that facilitates close visual analysis, and users are able to export image files for use in papers, presentations, or elsewhere in their studies. In addition, teachers can organize and upload outside images into course folders, which students can access both at school and from home. You can find the link to it here, and once you’re on the ARTstor landing page, click the orange “Go” button near the upper right to begin searching.

Looking for Harmony: Technology and Music Instruction

Jung Mi Lee instructing a student

Any discussion of technology in the music classroom is bound to include thought-provoking commentary and intriguing anecdotes. The abundance of software programs and Web-based social media outlets available today intensifies the opportunities and challenges of incorporating technology into teaching. While some music teachers have embraced these offerings as a way to diversify their instructional methods, others have proceeded more slowly, questioning the role of technology in a process that has long been characterized by face-to-face interaction. While it appears that most classroom music teachers have come to terms with technology as a teaching tool, there is still considerable debate over its proper role in the private teaching studio.

Charlie Jennison

Recently Drew Gatto, the academy’s music librarian, interviewed two PEA adjunct music faculty members, Jung Mi Lee and Charlie Jennison, to find out how technology—specifically sound recordings, digital music files and notation software — has impacted their private teaching studios.

Please click here to read the complete interview.