Ebrary Online Sheet Music (review)

Abstract

Ebrary Online Sheet Music. Published by ebrary, Inc. [Requires Web browser, Internet connection, free downloadable ebrary Reader software (for requirements for the Reader, see http://site.ebrary.com/lib/anysite/support/2_support01.jsp#000) Pricing: 20 cents per FTE, with a minimum fee of $3,000 per year. Ebrary is also open to consortial pricing arrangements. Ebrary's Online Sheet Music collection represents an early attempt to provide digitized scores as a subscription package to libraries. Sales calls and mailings to my inbox from online score vendors seem to have lagged behind those from the many digital audio packages, image collections, full-text databases, and digital video streams now available. Of course, nineteenth- and twentieth-century popular is available in abundance at no cost via the Internet, and some institutions offer a sampling of public domain Western art scores on their Web sites. Overall though, the educational market for subscription-based digital scores seems to remain relatively untapped at this writing. The primary advantage of ebrary's scores is the convenience factor. Patrons who frequently find themselves in last-minute need of a basic score by a canonic Western composer may stand to benefit most. There are, however, several aspects of ebrary's score collection that need improvement. Little investigation of ebrary's products is required to reveal that scores have not received nearly the attention that books have received in the areas of metadata, search and browse functionalities, study tools (called Info Tools), and presentation. As a result, the scores appear as a loosely tethered add-on to ebrary's robust e-book collection. Content Containing over 9,000 ebrary's Online Sheet Music collection comprises Western classical scores taken directly from Theodore Presser's CD Sheet Music series, and twentieth-century popular from Duke University, referred to by ebrary as the Americana collection (http://www.ebrary.com/corp/collateral/en/Sheet_Music/ebrary_Sheet_Music.pdf). The original sources of the CD Sheet Music materials are out-of-copyright standard editions from publishers such as Breitkopf and Hartel, C. F. Peters, G. Schirmer, Carl Fischer, G. Ricordi, Durand and many others (http://www.cdsheetmusic.com/). They represent a sampling of basic Western art repertoire, with most major eighteenth- and nineteenth-century composers represented. Most of this content is formatted as study scores, but some titles, such as chamber music, are available as individual parts as well. Ebrary has made no consequential modifications of Theodore Presser's original files, and has even retained the term sheet music instead of renaming the collection scores--a debatable decision. I suspect many librarians would prefer the term Users may print any of the titles offered by ebrary. Terms of use for the presumably falls under the umbrella Terms of Use statement ebrary gives for its entire collection of both books and music. Unlike the sources for most of ebrary's text materials, original sources for CD Sheet Music scans are out-of-copyright. It would seem appropriate to append an additional clause that clarifies the specific terms of use for the collection. Such a clause could not be located on the site and the publisher did not respond to a request for clarification. Metadata and Searching A search engine within a database is only as good as the data it searches. Any discussion regarding the ease of use or efficacy of ebrary's search engine when seeking must be prefaced by an introduction to metadata for their scores. A typical bibliographic record for a score includes the following fields: Author: The field containing the author's information is labeled Contributor and actually refers to the composer when viewing material in the section. …