blog.humaneguitarist.org

I just saw the posting below in my email today. I'm certainly going to see if I can submit something on MXMLiszt …

Call for articles: Music information retrieval (MIR) special issue

_OCLC Systems & Services: International Digital Library Perspectives_ (OSS:IDLP) will be publishing a special issue on music information retrieval (MIR) and libraries. The editor is looking for articles that articulate the planning, development, testing, systems work, marketing, etc. related to MIR, as well as the challenges of providing access to MIR materials. Articles can be of any length, and figures and screen shots are encouraged. OSS:IDLP is a peer-reviewed journal.

If you are interested in contributing, please send the editor your name, a short proposal of the topic, and a tentative title for the article. Deadline for proposals is September 1, 2010. Articles would be due to the editor by February 1, 2011. Any questions and proposal should be directed to the editor, not to this listserv. Thank you.

Dr. Brad Eden
Editor, _OCLC Systems & Services: International Digital Library Perspectives_
Associate University Librarian for Technical Services and Scholarly Communication
University of California, Santa Barbara
eden@library.ucsb.edu

If anyone's reading and is interested: last week the Code4Lib Journal published an article of mine entitled "AudioRegent: Exploiting SimpleADL and SoX for Digital Audio Delivery".

The article is a little overview of AudioRegent and SimpleADL and how they are utilized at the University of Alabama Libraries, where I work.

from http://journal.code4lib.org/mission:

"The Code4Lib Journal exists to foster community and share information among those interested in the intersection of libraries, technology, and the future."

Due to some problems with offering links to PDF files and such that were in WordPress' default upload folder, I've had to move all images and files I offer for download into a new folder – one that is not a subfolder to WordPress, the blogging software that drives this blog.

Therefore, if anyone's linked to or bookmarked any graphics, PDF, or XML files, etc. offered on this blog, your old links will be broken.

In other words, a file called "foo.txt" that had been at

http://blog.humaneguitarist.org/wp-content/uploads/foo.txt

would now be located at

http://blog.humaneguitarist.org/uploads/foo.txt

All links to these files within my blog posts themselves should now be correctly updated.

I'm sorry for any inconvenience.

This is my final semester at the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama.

For my final credits, I’ll be researching the digital encoding of symbolic music representation (SMR), i.e. "sheet music", its background, and the benefits it offers over simply thinking of SMR as an image – all within the context of libraries, including avenues of web-based delivery, preservation and metadata, and search and retrieval technologies. My research will be directed by Dr. Steven MacCall.

In addition to a paper addressing these issues, I’m required to deliver what is essentially a "demo" of a MusicXML web-based delivery system that could serve to demonstrate to librarians the possibilities that arise with the usage of XML-encoded musical information.

I’ll be blogging along this semester as part of a modular approach to constructing the paper. Currently, I’m plugging away at the demo which utilizes open-source server-side music applications.

The first idea behind the demo is that one could "drop" MusicXML documents on their server and – via automation – PDF, audio, and preliminary Dublin Core metadata are generated. So far, I’ve got all that covered but I need to polish the output and I really need to comment-up my PHP code as I’m even forgetting at times what I’ve done and why. I’ll be sharing the code as well as the XSL transformations that are used to generate the Dublin Core metadata from the MusicXML documents.

As time allows, I’ll try and add some cool features. For example, this week I implemented libmusicxml so that the user can generate a PDF of a musical score in a different key than the original. I’m guessing this is the same way that the Wikifonia site offers this transposition option. I’ll have to ask them to make sure.

The second idea behind the demo is to implement a search/retrieval mechanism using XQuery. This will prove the biggest challenge as I don’t know XQuery well, but I have some excellent sources on querying MusicXML documents from which I can learn. Implementing XQuery on the site has – for the most part – already been dealt with in terms of scripting. In other words, the hard, hard work is done in terms of the demo, but I’m not quite there yet …

ps: Unfortunately, the server-side software required to run the demo can’t be added to a free server like the one I use for this blog. But while I can’t host the demo, I will at the end of the semester offer it as a download-able package so that one can run it on their personal computer as server.

This blog post is part of a semester-long investigation into digital encoding of symbolic music representation (SMR), its context in libraries, web-based delivery, preservation and metadata, and search and retrieval technologies.

Last week I learned via Facebook that the open-source, cross-platform music notation software MuseScore will be provided to to New South Wales high school students via the NSW Department of Education and Training’s Digital Education Revolution program. The open-source, cross-platform audio editor Audacity will also be included.

The program provides laptops to high school students. If they make it past their last year, the students get to keep the device.

That’s not bad, especially considering that most people’s computer needs are tapering off and a solid machine from 2009 should be good for quite some time.

Interestingly, the machine will be powered by Windows 7 and will come loaded with Microsoft Office and various Adobe sofware – i.e. this won’t be a banner example for the open-source and Linux communities.

For the machine’s specs and a software list click here.

Of particular interest is the fact that students and parents have to sign a Laptop User Charter before they can take the device home. Otherwise, they can only use it in class.

Still curious? You can watch the snazzy promo video below. If you want, you can skip ahead to the part that discusses the charter.

Just a short post this week:

Here’s a story about some of the negative impacts of media multitasking as seen by a recent Standford study.

Here’s the gist:

Compulsive media multitaskers are worse at focusing their attention, worse at organizing information, and worse at quickly switching between tasks (italics mine), the Stanford scientists wrote.

While their conclusions don’t surprise me, I am surprised that this kind of stuff is even news – there’s a certain amount of obsessive focus that accompanies real results. Not to mention, similar articles have appeared before.

But I guess we didn’t notice or remember due to our collective multitasking.

I gave into Facebook, now I’m giving into blogging.

I figure it’s a good way to add some level of organization to the research I do. Plus, I think blogging is increasingly looked upon as a yet-unwritten necessity for library job applicants, it’s a way to provide future fodder for potential articles, and it’ll keep my writing chops alive.

As far as the topics I’ll try to cover, please read this.