Jazz Appreciation Month

April is Jazz Appreciation Month. Jazz is a uniquely American musical art form. It originated in the African-American community in New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 1800s. The Great Migration helped to spread Jazz to other parts of the country. The development of commercial radio programming in the 1920s made Jazz a national and international phenomenon.

New Orleans, March 2010. Jazz dance at "Maison", 508 Frenchmen Street. Detroit Brooks on banjo, Dr. Michael White on clarinet, Gregg Stafford, trumpet.
By Seamus Murray (originally posted to Flickr as Maison) [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. 

Our library has a large collection of Jazz books, audio recordings, and other items.

Books:
The Contradictions of Jazz by Paul E. Rinzler
Giants of Jazz by Studs Terkel
Jazz: A History of America's Music by Geoffrey C. Ward
Jazz Icons: Heroes, Myths and the Jazz Tradition by Tony Whyton
Jazz Improvisation for Keyboard Players by Dan Haerle
Jazz Italian Style: From its Origins in New Orleans to Fascist Italy and Sinatra by Anna Harwell Celenza
Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence by Andre Hodier
Jazz Masters of the Thirties by Rex Stewart
The Jazz Tradition by Martin T. Williams
Texan Jazz by Dave Oliphant
Understanding Jazz by Leroy Ostransky
Where's the Melody? A Listeners' Introduction to Jazz by Martin T. Williams
Why Jazz Happened by Marc Myers

Thelonious Monk in 1947.
William P. Gottlieb [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Digital Audio Recordings:
Billie Holiday: The Commodore Master Takes by Billie Holiday
Cole Porter Songbook by Cole Porter
Count Basie and Oscar Peterson: Yessir, That's my Baby by Count Basie
Ella Fitzgerald, the Best of the Concert Years by Ella Fitzgerald
The European Tour by John Coltrane
Gentle Duke by Duke Ellington
Miles Davis Plays for Lovers by Miles Davis
Satchmo Serenades by Louis Armstrong

Ella Fitzgerald in 1947.
By William P. Gottlieb  [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Biographies:
Billie Holiday: Wishing on the Moon by Donald Clarke
Count Basie: Swingin' the Blues, 1936-1950 by Ken Vail
Duke Ellington and His World: A Biography by A.H. Lawrence
Ella Fitzgerald: The Complete Biography by Stuart Nicholson
John Coltrane and Black America's Quest for Freedom: Spirituality and the Music by Leonard L. Brown
Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life by Laurence Bergreen
Miles Davis: A Biography by Ian Carr
Monk's Music: Thelonious Monk and Jazz History in the Making by Gabriel Solis

Louis Armstrong in 1953.
By World-Telegram staff photographer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Let us know if you need help finding additional library resources on Jazz or any other topic by calling 254-968-9249 or emailing reference@tarleton.edu.

OverDrive eBooks!

Tarleton State University Libraries has a new feature:  OverDrive eBooks (and digital audiobooks)!

From the library's home page (www.tarleton.edu/library), choose Databases, and then OverDrive.  Depending on your browser settings and whether or not you are already logged into NTNET, you may (or may not) get the authentication screen, which looks like this:

Enter your NTNET ID and password, and click Login.  You'll then get a screen like this:

Scroll down the page, because there are a number of different groupings of the eBooks, or use the menu at the top.  There's also a search box in the upper right corner, if you are looking for a specific title or author.

If you are familiar with OverDrive from using it at other libraries, the interface is the same here.  Tarleton has partnered with other libraries in the Texas A&M System to purchase eBooks and digital audiobooks for this shared resource.  Keep checking as more titles are being added!

If the book shape (or headphones, for an audiobook) in the upper right corner for a title is dark, it is available for checkout.  If it is grayed out, you can place a hold on the item and be notified when it becomes available (and have it automatically checked out to you .  The eBooks can be downloaded in Kindle or EPUB format, or read in your browser.  Items can be borrowed for 14 days, and you can have up to 10 items checked out and 10 items on hold at any one time.

Digital Public Library of America

We told you a couple of months ago that the Tarleton Grassburrs are now online, through the Portal to Texas History. Did you know, though, that because they are in the Portal to Texas History, they are also included in the Digital Public Library of America? You can find them in the DPLA using this search link.*

Screenshot of DPLA Homepage 4/17/2014

The DPLA is a nationwide digital library that partners with regional digital libraries, such as the Portal to Texas History, and institutions like the New York Public Library and the Smithsonian to bring you content from all over the country in one place. You can search by date, keyword or by place. As you can see below, there are many items from the Stephenville area in the DPLA!

So, get out there and explore the DPLA!  You might find the perfect picture, newspaper article, book or other primary source for your research, or discover something completely new about your home town.

*Updated 4/18/2014 to add direct link to Grassburrs.

National Digital Public Library Launched

The National Digital Public Library was launched April 18th. It is a project to make available the holdings of America's archive, research libraries, and museums. The library serves as a portal to the digital collections of several libraries. Among the hubs are Harvard, University of Virginia, David Rumsey Map Collection, National Archives and Records Administration, the New York Public Library, and the Smithsonian to name a few. Items included in the library are maps, photographs, medieval manuscripts, Latin American pamphlets, over 3,000 daguerreotypes, and 420 trial narratives involving marriage and sexuality. In the coming months items on music, zoology, cartography, and colonial history will be added. Currently the library has between two and three million items. The Digital library is searchable by date, place, exhibition, or bu using a search box. When you receive your search results it indicates which collection they are from and how many items each repository has on you r subject. To visit the National Digital public Library visit: http://dp.la/ for an article about the library see: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/apr/25/national-digital-public-library-launched/?page=1