multimedia databases for public service in music libraries

Multimedia Databases for Public Service in Music LibrariesAuthor(s): Mary Kay DugganSource: Fontes Artis Musicae, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Januar-März 1991), pp. 49-55Published by: International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres(IAML)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23508056 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 18:28

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres (IAML) is collaboratingwith JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Fontes Artis Musicae.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.121 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 18:28:36 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=iaml

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=iaml

http://www.jstor.org/stable/23508056?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


49

Multimedia Databases for Public Service in Music Libraries*

Mary Kay Duggan (Berkeley, California)4

The extension of publishing from the print format to the electronic format initially encouraged electronic publication of the same kind of information amenable to print, that is, text without

illustrations. With the development of inexpensive multimedia software and large disk storage for

personal workstations, the scope of electronic publishing now includes sound and images as

options for authors creating new publications. Music librarians are particularly sensitive to the needs of library users to choose materials for

the nature and quality of sound and for the pitch, melody, and other aspects notated on the score.

A brief survey of current multimedia electronic publishing titles relevant to the field reveals the

extent to which electronic publishing can provide access to music sounds and scores. Such multimedia tools could allow access to the sound and look of music in library catalogs and

public services.

The HyperCard software of the Macintosh computer will be used to demonstrate access to CD

publishers' catalogues on the Electronic Whole Earth Catalog and other CD-ROMs. A sound input device and image scanner will be used with HyperCard to create a multimedia entry for a music

database. Attendees at the session will be invited to use the multimedia CD-ROM publications as well as to create a HyperCard entry with the input devices.

Die Erweiterung des Publizierens von der gedruckten Form auf die elektronische Version hat an

fangs dazu ermuntert, die elektronische Publikation auf die gleiche Art vorzunehmen, wie sie

beim Druck üblich ist, nämlich Text ohne Illustrationen. Aufgrund der Entwicklung preiswerter Multimediasoftware und großer Plattenspeicher für Arbeitsplatzrechner schließt jetzt der Bereich

elektronisches Publizieren Ton und Bilder wahlweise zur Schaffung neuer Publikationen für die

Autoren mit ein.

Musikbibliothekare sind besonders empfänglich für die Bedürfnisse von Bibliotheksbenutzern, indem sie Materialien entsprechend der Eigenschaft des Klangs und der Tonhöhe, der Melodie und

anderer Aspekte, wie sie in der Partitur notiert sind, auswählen. Ein kurzer Überblick gegenwärtig

verfügbarer Multimediatitel für elektronisches Publizieren offenbart das Ausmaß, mit dem das elektronische Publizieren auch Zugang zu Musikklängen und Partituren gewähren kann. Solche Multimediahilfsmittel erlauben den Zugriff zur Darstellung des Klangbildes und der Notations

form von Musik in Bibliothekskatalogen und Benutzungsdiensten. Die Hypercard-Software des Macintosh-Computers wird genutzt, um CD-Kataloge am Beispiel

des Electronic Whole Earth Catalog und anderer CD-ROMs zu demonstrieren. Ein Klangeingabe

gerät und Bildabtaster werden mit HyperCard benutzt, um einen Multimediazugang zu einer

Musikdatenbank zu ermöglichen. Sitzungsteilnehmer sind eingeladen, die Multimedia-CD-ROM

Publikationen zu nutzen, ebenso wie eine Hypercard-Eingabe mit den Eingabegeräten möglich ist.

Multimedia digital publishing promises to become commonplace in the 90s. A number of publications in the field of music have already appeared incorporating sound, images, and text, some with the possibility of interaction with the user. Multimedia software

is available on Apple Macintosh, DOS, and UNIX platforms that allow library cata

logues to incorporate sound and images with MARC records. Music composers, music

schools, and some music libraries are beginning to use such software on workstations

to create databases that combine MIDI and synthesizer with computer for sound input

* Paper given at a session of the Commission on Service and Training at the IAML Conference in Boulogne,

8—13 July 1990. * *

Mary Kay Duggan is Associate Professor at the School of Library and Information Studies, University of California at Berkeley.



50 Mary Kay Duggan: Multimedia Databases for Public Service in Music Libraries

and editing. Music libraries of the future may incorporate multimedia workstations

into their audio-visual laboratories for access to catalogues and digital publications. By

the end of this decade a new mode of music publications may be collected by music libraries. Along with printed scores and sound recordings some music compositions may be acquired as publications on optical disk in the original digital form, together with abbreviated software for performance on a computer with earphones or audio

speakers.

By incorporating an introduction to the multimedia format into the curriculum,

music library educators can expand students' horizons for public service and collection

development. Described below is an introduction to the use and critical analysis of

selected databases and CD-ROMs on Macintosh, DOS and UNIX machines available in a school laboratory. A proposed assignment involves the construction of an abbre

viated multimedia database using multimedia software on one of the systems, in this

case HyperCard on the Macintosh. Instructional goals include the ability to instruct

others in the use of current publications, basic competence and critical understanding

of one multimedia software system as well as how to create a multimedia database on

it, and a current perspective on multimedia in the library today. Multimedia publica

tions received an early boost from the invention of HyperCard software and its

incorporation into the Macintosh computer as standard equipment. HyperCard provides

the creator of a hypermedia file or stack with a software program that allows the easy

manipulation of sound segments and graphic images. By providing that software on all

Macintosh computers, Apple made it inexpensive to access HyperCard databases on any such machine.

The Electronic Whole Earth Catalog1 was created in 1988 for the Apple Macintosh

computer to take advantage of Apple's relatively new hypermedia software, Hyper

Card, and the digital sound input of a piece of hardware called the MacRecorder. The earlier printed Whole Earth Catalog was a comprehensive clearinghouse of reviews and

contact information for thousands of practical tools, services, periodicals, and books.

The electronic version available on CD-ROM for $149.95 provides multimedia in formation on 3500 products, including sound recordings. Of the 420 megabytes of

information on the CD-ROM in the HyperCard software, 60 are text and graphics and

340 sound, the latter made up of more than 500 separate examples. HyperCard, free

with every Macintosh, provides the creater of a hypermedia file, or stack, with a

software program for the easy manipulation of sound segments and graphic images. The MacRecorder produced by Farallon costs only about $200.00; it records monaural

sound segments for the Macintosh, receiving them through a microphone or directly

through a jack and converting them to the digital zeros and ones of the computer.2 In order to understand the quality of sound contained on the Electronic Whole Earth

Catalog, review the capabilities of the MacRecorder in sound digitizing and compres sion of data and the resulting trade-offs in size of digital information and quality of sound.

Table 1. Sound digitization and compression, MacRecorder

Sampling Rate Compression Rate Size of 1-minute

22 Kilohertz 3:1 22 Kh 1:1 1200 Kb 11 Kilohertz 4:1 22 Kh 4:1 300 Kb 7 Kilohertz 6:1 4 Kilohertz 8:1

1 See Suzanne Stefanac's review in Macworld (December 1989), 197. 2 See Jim Heid's review of MacRecorder 2.0 in Macworld (December 1989), 199, 201.



Mary Kay Duggan: Multimedia Databases for Public Service in Music Libraries 51

What the Controls Do

Clicking the Homo button takes you to

HyperCard Home.

The Whole Earth Table of Contents is where you start.

k

Click Introduction & First Time Help for complete operating Instructions and an explanation of how the Electronic Whole Earth Cata

log Is arranged.

TABLE OF 1 CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION & FIRST TIME HELP *ifr* HEALTH'

WHOLE SYSTEMS m NOM/CDICS

COMMUNITY Km COMMUNICATIONS

PLACE iV sss m / MEDIA

HOUSEHOLD / LEARNING

CRAFT MUSIC

LIVELIHOOD m

ABC INDEX

Click NAME to enter domain

II QUICK | Click PICTURE for domain contents

A click on the Domain picture takes you to an outline of the Contents of that Domain.

A click on the Domain name takes you to that Domain.

K Click Index to get an alphabetical list

Click Help for an Click Quick Search to of the Articles on-screen explana- find any word on the contained In the tion of this card. disc. Occurrences Electronic Whole

are shown In context. Earth Catalog.

This is one of the twelve Domain cards, showing the Sections Clicking the Whole Earth button always takes In that Domain. Click on a Section's title to go there. / you back to the Table of Contents.

, Clicking the Forward button always takes you to another card of the type you are looking at. In this case, you'll go to another Domain card. Think of them as being arranged in a circle — If you keep clicking, you'll "wrap around" back to where you started.

Clicking the Reverse button takes you back to the previous Domain card. In effect going through the list of Domains In the other direction.

Illustration 1. The opening screen, HyperCard software, Electronic Whole Earth Catalog, San

Rafael, CA: Broderbund Software, 1989.



52 Mary Kay Duggan: Multimedia Databases for Public Service in Music Libraries

At the highest level of quality available through the MacRecorder, 22 Kilohertz, a

1-minute monaural sound segment will create a computer file that occupies about

1200 kilobytes of space, or more than one megabyte of a hard disk. It has been trimmed

of the extreme highs and lows of fine audio quality. The minute of sound can be

compressed from one megabyte of space to about 300 kilobytes by using a 4:1 compres

sion rate, again losing some quality in the process. It is that combination of 22

Kilohertz compressed 4:1 that was used for the Electronic Whole Earth Catalog. The

quality of sound is still equivalent to the quality of ratio output.

The user of a HyperCard database, made up of "cards" in a "stack", moves a mouse

on the flat surface of a desk to move a cursor around the screen, choosing to click on

"buttons," images or text that have been linked by the database designer to other bits

of information. The opening screen of the Electronic Whole Earth Catalog (s. Illustra

tion 1, p. 51) functions as a table of contents. To move to a specific category of in

formation, a user may choose any image or text and click the mouse. To browse

music publishers, click the Music domain button. Each Domain card acts as a guide

to its section, containing a number of Section buttons; sections are further broken

down into clusters, each of which contains reviews, articles, and contact information

for a product. In addition, cross references appear in a box at the bottom of each cluster

card to enable a user to click on any of the references and move directly to that topic.

Two of the Sections are publishers' catalogues of sound recordings. A look at "Re

cordings by Mail 1" shows us clusters:

Ethnic and Classical Folk New Music & New Age Children's Multi-Faceted Labels

Multi-Faceted Distributors

The cluster Ethnic and Classical includes catalogs of four publishers, Musical

Heritage, Seven Arrows, Lyrichord, and Global Village, each with a bibliographic

description, cover illustration, address, and cost. Cards for publishers contain selected

catalog entries with information on particular CDs or tape cassettes, again with bib

liographic descriptions, cover illustrations, cost, plus sound segments. Another cluster entitled Musical Culture includes examples of musical instruments

played by indigenous performers. For example, by clicking the button designated by the

icon of a musical note placed on the photograph of didgeridu players, one can hear the

sound of the instrument as well as look at the picture. Alternatively, one may look at

the music notation for the sound on two cards while listening to the sound.

Other clusters on the CD-ROM integrate sound with pictures of birds or animals (the

mating call of frogs) or books of poetry (Jack Nicholson and Bobby McFerrin narrating Kipling's The Elephant's Child). The publication proved that saving sound segments of

high quality and re-using them in a computer environment for information browsing are feasible in HyperCard and potentially enormously useful in choosing aural in

formation.

Multimedia publications specifically aimed at the music market have appeared recently. HyperCard was used by Warner Communications to produce The Magic Flute

on a set of three CD-ROMs based on a 1988 German CD release.3 A professional level

of sound replaces the monaural MacRecorder with full stereo CD quality of 44 kHz, but the black and white images at 72 dots per inch barely allow more than two lines

3 "Warner Audio Notes Series On Disc" CD-ROM EndUser (August 1989), 47—48; "Multimedia Mozart Warner New Media's 'The Magic Flute'" Computer Shopper June 1990.




of music to be displayed at a time on the screen. The CD-ROM performs well at

coordinating super-titles in either German or English with the music; a Japanese trans

lation is now in progress, with translations into European languages to follow.4 An

analysis of the music is presented at two levels, high school and college, varying in

depth and quality. One of the more successful sequences is the thirty cards or screens

on the fugue written by Irene Girton. A Bach fugue is presented in notation and sound

with a structural analysis. Another card illustrates tempos with Italian and English terms and buttons to reach the sound of metronomic beats or musical examples. At a different level, Anna Russell's interpretation of an aria may be sampled. An

ambitious group of titles has been promised for Warner's CD-ROM series5, from Stra

vinsky's Rite of Spring to Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire.

Multimedia software systems are also available on personal computers with DOS, from encyclopedias to distance learning tools.6 A recent example is Compton's Multi

media Encyclopedia7 with full-color pictures and sound. The 60 minutes of sound

includes examples of the music of Beethoven and Bach as well as famous speeches, birds singing, and even the rumble of an earthquake. The size of a digitized sound

segment is a real obstacle to encyclopedic works. In HyperCard a 15-second sound

segment at only 22 kHz can completely fill a disc of 750 kilobytes. Newer multimedia software such as that of the Compton encyclopedia uses sophisticated compression

techniques to reduce the size of sound and image files but the 550 megabytes of a

CD-ROM is still extremely small for sound files. Compton's Encyclopedia includes the entire text of the 26-volume work plus 15,000 illustrations, 34 animated sequences, 60 minutes of sound and a complete dictionary. Few of the images are in color, since

color can increase file size by a factor of 30.

Promised for summer 1990 were two CD-ROMs providing access to bibliographical information on music CDs along with sound segments and some color cover images.

Already out is CD Guide, a compilation of 40,000 CD listings together with about 5,000 reviews from the magazine CD Guide. It includes a very few sound segments and

full-color CD covers. An annual subscription with quarterly updates is $250.00—; a

single CD-ROM is $99.00. The publisher of the Schwann Catalog, Jonathan Bird, hoped to have an optical version of that publication by summer, and Bowker announced for

1990 Music Directory Plus, a publication on CD-ROM of CD information. Both await

copyright clarification, including negotiations with ASCAP (The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers) and its British counterpart. The optical Schwann

Catalog was to contain alternative interfaces for in-store use and for library acqui sition and cataloging use.

A popular advanced workstation among composers is the NeXt, with its ability to

perform several tasks at once and display them on the screen simultaneously in

overlapping windows. Built into the NeXt is an excellent sound digitizer capable of

storing stereo sound at CD quality of 44 IcHz. For about $500.00, the Image Station

multimedia software brings the power of about 100 megabytes of programming to the

storage, editing, database creation, and display of information. Like the Macintosh, the

4 Roger Kerroker, "Warner goes mass-market route for musical CD-ROM," Mac WEEK (30 January 1990). 5 "Warner New Media Introduces 'Audio Notes', A new Compact Disc Form Combining CD-Audio and CD

ROM," Content no. 6 (1989). Interactive hardware to bring such products into the home is promised soon.

Sony, Philips, and Time-Warner's New Media division each announced plans to ship interactive multimedia

systems by the middle or end of 1991; the three systems are based on different standards developed by the

respective vendors. Consumer prices will be high, $800—$1,000 for Warner's Magila system player (Erik Holsinger, "Newsbeat," Publish 5:9 [September 1990), 24). 6 Henry and Elizabeth Urrows, "The First Multimedia CD, from France," Optical Information Systems 9

(1989), 44—46. 7 For a review of CD-ROM encyclopedias, see "Exploring CD-ROM Encyclopedias" Optical Information

Systems 9 (1989), 259.



54 Mary Kay Duggan: Multimedia Databases loi Public Service in Music Libraries

NeXt is configured to allow keyboard input through a MIDI interface. Instead of a floppy disk, NeXt users have the space of a 250 megabyte optical disk on which to build databases. While there are few commercial CD-ROMs published with NeXt software, there are already many student composers producing their own works on optical disks

in university laboratories. This fall both HyperCard on the Macintosh and Image Station on the NeXt have

promised upgrades that will make color a standard feature. Greatly improved com

pression techniques promise to reduce the size of image and sound files. Libraries will have to provide color monitors with at least the 72 dots per inch resolution of the Mac

and VGA on the personal computer; the excellence of current image digitizers should encourage the creation of multimedia software that allows higher screen resolution.

Moving images require the purchase of boards in the personal computer. Stereo sound is becoming standard. Computers with larger memories, multi-tasking capabilities, and

speed are going to be necessary to process the multimedia databases of the new

software.

What does a music library need today to create its own sound catalog of a local CD

collection? Table 2 gives a basic list of hardware and software for the Apple Macintosh and NeXt computers.

As each CD is cataloged, a segment of sound, 1 minute or 30 seconds, perhaps of each

band, can be digitized and edited. As it is compressed and saved on an optical cartridge, an index of label numbers can be updated. The sound segment can then be accessed

from the library catalog of MARC records via the label number or by any desired library record number. Users can search on genres or subject headings, performance groups,

composers, etc., retrieve the bibliographic record, click on an icon of a music note, and

browse sound segments. If Apple's HyperCard were used, no software or frontend

system other than a numerical index would be necessary on the cartridge of sound

segments. A catalog of about 1000 1-minute monaural segments would fit on a MAC

WORM drive of 800 megabytes. Does the library have the right to copy a segment of sound from a sound recording

in order to make that segment available to patrons trying to use the collection? The

answer to that question in the U.S. would seem to be yes if applied to a single library,

through the faire use principle.8 If the information is to be used by a group of librar

ies in a union catalog, the answer is less clear. The publishers of the Electronic

Whole Earth Catalog found a large group of publishers of sound recordings who were

eager to cooperate in a multimedia catalog on CD-ROM, who in fact supplied the

digitized sound segments themselves. Those publishers included such names as

Musical Heritage Society, Folkways, Lyrichord, Seven Arrows, and the Library of

Congress Folklife Center. If a catalog of sound segments were to be published on a

fixed medium such as CD-ROM and distributed in many copies, rights would have to be obtained. Many small publishers of ethnic music and other genres would likely be glad to cooperate in granting rights for the production of sound indexes to recordings as a means of reaching a wider public. Labels currently well served by radio's top 40 lists might have less interest in cooperating with the development of sound catalogues to expand their market. National and international library organizations such as

IAML may be of assistance in clarifying the right of libraries to use sound segments in library catalogs. National libraries have the physical copies necessary to do large-scale

8 For a general discussion of the issue, see the author's "Copyright and Technology: Fair Use in the Electronic Age," paper delivered at the Annual Conference of the American Library Association, Chicago, Illinois, June 24, 1990 to appear in Online, March 1991; Anne W. Branscomb, "Who Owns Creativity? Property Rights in the Information Age," Technology Review, May/June 1988, reprinted in Microsoft Yearbook 1989—1990 (Seattle: Microsoft Press, 1989), pp. 425—34; CD-ROM Licensing and -Copyright Issues for Libraries, edited by Nancy Melin Nelson (Westport, CT: Meckler, 1990).




sound segment publication. As the legality of the practice becomes codified in law, national bibliographic distribution of MARC records with related sound samples on tape or CD-ROM could become possible.

As a demonstration to student music librarians that sound is desirable and possible in the computer workstation of the music library catalog, an assignment was construct

ed requiring the browsing of a small HyperCard demonstration database of music

bibliographic records, images of printed music, and sound segments, followed by design and construction of a HyperCard database.9 By whom and where sound segments will

be assembled for the user of sound in the library is a matter of defining goals and

facing legalities and practicalities. Music librarians may have a formative role in

deciding some of the boundaries of sound indexes of the future.

Table 2. Computer hardware components for production and display of a multimedia

publication.

A. Apple Macintosh computer

Macintosh II (hard disk) with RAM to edit 1200 kilobyte sound segments (comes with

HyperCard software and MIDI interface), about $3000.00 MacRecorder 2.0 (Farallon, Berkeley, CA) sound digitizer, $200.00

Sampling Rate Compression Rate File Size fl minute)

22 Kiloherz 3:1 22 kHz 1:1 = 1200 Kilobytes 11 Kilohertz 4:1 22 kHz 4:1 = 300 Kilobytes 7 Kilohertz 6:1 4 Kilohertz 8:1

A scanner (graphics digitizer) Handheld ScanMan, about $200.00, 4 inches wide Flatbed scanner, $1000.00 and up, 8 1/2 inches wide

Optical drive for completed publication WORM (write-once) such as Corel 800 megabytes, $4,000.00

each cartridge, $150.00 Erasable drive such as Storage Dimensions 1 gigabyte (1000 megabytes)

about $4,000.00 each cartridge, $150.00

or CD-ROM drive, $1,000.00 each CD-ROM, ?

Earphones or amplified speaker to plug into Macintosh computer

Keyboard synthesizer, optional

B. NeXt Computer

NeXt (330 megabytes, multi-tasking), about $6,500.00 (comes with sound digitizer and MIDI interface) Media Station software (about 100 megabytes of data), $495.00

Scanner as above

Optical disk drive is included in the computer cartridges of 250 megabytes, about $55.00

Keyboard synthesizer, optional

9 "Nineteenth-Century Sheet Music," 4 Apple discs, and a ten-page guide to design and creation of a Hyper Card database using ScanMan and MacRecorder.



multimedia databases for public service in music libraries

Documents