New York Philharmonic Digital Archives (review)

Abstract

York Philharmonic [New York, York]: York Philharmonic, February 2011-. http://archives.nyphil.org/ (Accessed May 2013). [Requires a Web browser and an Internet connection. Pricing: freely accessible.]IntroductionThe York Philharmonic contains high-quality digital scans of the orchestra's programs, scores, instrumental parts, images, and business documents from the years 1943 to 1970, a time period referred to as the orchestra's Inter - national Era. Although the physical archives begin with the orchestra's first concert in 1842, this date range was picked, according to the Web site, because is when Government begins funding the arts, when women join the Orchestra, when the Philharmonic opens Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, when the Orchestra musicians win 52-week contracts, when television becomes main stream and the Long Playing record is invented, and it is the time of Leonard Bernstein's leadership.1 This is also a time period in the orchestra's history when a wide variety of formats was produced, which allows the orchestra to showcase many different kinds of materials in the The Ar - chives is partially funded by Save America's Treasures, through partnership with the National Parks Service and the National Endowment for the Arts. It is also funded by the Leon Levy Foundation through its Grant program.Interface DesignThe home page of the has a search box near the top labeled the Archives. To the right of the box is a pull-down menu to specify which type of format to search. One can type in a data range at this screen as well. There is a little question mark icon next to the search box that reveals the following text when the mouse cursor hovers over it: Help: For search tips, click on the 'Help' section above. Although the site does not display browse buttons, one can choose a particular format from the pulldown menu and click Search to retrieve all the items available. No advanced search exists. The system will search all formats by default, regardless of the format selected; however, the format selected will be the one displayed in the main part of the page. The text the Archives also serves as the link back to the home page, although there is no highlighting or underlining on this text that makes this function apparent. There is no other Home link on the page. Halfway down the home page is a rotating gallery of hyperlinked images introducing the Archives, as well as a link to the blog Digital Buzz: Stories from the Archives.2 The section marked New Release towards the bottom of the page proclaims that the now has 520,000 pages of parts marked by York Philharmonic musicians, and highlights three notable items from the collection.NavigationLooking at these items is a good introduction to the site's content. At the time of this writing, one item on this page is the viola part for the Symphony no. 2 by Robert Schumann, which according to the site is from the Philharmonic's oldest set of parts, in usage from 1854. Clicking on the Go to Part link takes the user to the site's image viewer, with controls similar to those found on Open Library.3 The composer, title, and opus number are displayed on the top leftof the screen. At the top right are buttons to rotate the image, a button for a magnifying glass that enlarges a small rectangular area when the mouse hovers over the page, a button that displays the metadata record for the part, and a button to share a link to the image via Facebook, Twitter, or e-mail (login to ShareThis.com required). Cur - rently, buttons to play audio and video versions are grayed out, but when implemented they will provide links to the multimedia components of the archive. A slider control at the bottom of the screen allows the user to advance quickly to a particular page; other navigation buttons on the right control page views (one-up, two-up, and thumb nail), zooming in and out of the page, and turning pages. …