RE: jewish music databases/Keynote

[Jewish Music Institute <jewishmusic...>]

To Lori and Roger and anyone interested in databases for Jewish Music

We actually started cataloguing the JMI collection of about 3000 LPs and 1000 
78's on
Keynote this very day!  How interesting that this question should come up now?  
Our
system can both deal with lyrics in Hebrew fonts (a keyboard pops up, with the 
Hebrew
characters on, and its done on a phonetic system so that if you are a 
'touch-typer' you
can just do it without even looking).  It also deals with different spellings 
very well.

What is more Keynote has a tune manager.  (again with a pop up keyboard).  You 
can
search for a phrase - even in a different key, or in the middle of a song.  
(That is of
course if you have put it in).  We are even considering eventually putting in 
the tunes
from say one of the Yiddish songbooks, and a person can then purchase the tune 
manager
with 100 tunes already in it to add to your system.

Our two wonderful volunteer cataloguers, Abbi (who is on this list and doing a 
PhD in
Yiddish song at Cambridge) and Jeremy, (considering becoming a cantor) who have 
spent
the past weeks sorting the holdings into categories so we had some idea of what 
is in
the collection, soon got the hang of the system.  There is an input wizard that 
takes
you through the 13 steps. It gets quicker as you go along as once a performer or
composer, or even a song title has been 'in-putted' you never need to do it 
again, you
can just choose it from a drop down alphabetical list.  You can choose your
instrumentation from a page giving all the instruments and you can scan in 
pictures or
even scores.  You can make notes on all aspect and print out any reports of your
collection.  In fact its everything you could have dreamt of and more.  We are 
so
thrilled with it.  It will give hours of pleasure to anyone interested in 
cataloguing
their collection.

As you know cataloguing Jewish Music has been great interest of mine for some 
time.  I
have spent time with the librarians in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Just recently in 
New York
I was pleased to spend time with Elliot at JTS and see the OCLC stuff.  In 
Washington I
spent a lot of time with the librarian at the Holocaust Museum Library and with 
Bret
Werb, the music co-ordinator there, and was especially pleased to spend a good 
few hours
with Bob Freedman at KlezKamp and at his collection at the University of 
Pennsylvania.

My main finding is that each institution uses a different system, (and not 
everyone
really likes the system they have to use).  We have had the privilege of making 
a
special system ourselves to our own specification and it is continually being 
refined
and honed into a wonderful, useful, fun to use, and affordable research and 
information
tool.  We have been extremely lucky in that the person who has designed our 
Keynote
Database, (in consultation with the British Library National Sound Archive) is 
not only
a brilliant software designer, and an extremely clever fellow, but also very
importantly, he is a wonderful Jewish musician, has lived in Russian and 
Israel, and
understands languages and the nuances needed for the catalogue.

It has all the capabilities of being correlated with such international systems 
as OCLC
if and when that is desired and, in stage two when the data is all collected, 
Keynote
itself  will become searchable on the web (in a much more immediate and 
friendly way
than OCLC).

We all, who are starting to collate data, now have the opportunity to put our 
data onto
the same system, if we use Keynote, and by talking to each other on this list 
and others
(in this wonderful world yet close community of like minded people) we can 
polish it
together and then put all our collections together onto the web in Keynote, 
with all our
personal comments and anecdotes to make a giant unique encyclopaedia of Jewish
music.....
Do contact me or Gregori if you want to know more on line (or off).

Geraldine

Geraldine Auerbach MBE
Director, Jewish Music Institute
The School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG
Tel +44 (0)20 7898 4308   Fax +44 (0)20 7898 4309
E-mail jewishmusic (at) jmi(dot)org(dot)uk
Website www.jmi.org.uk








-----Original Message-----
From: owner-jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org [mailto:owner-jewish-music (at) 
shamash(dot)org]On Behalf Of
Lori Cahan-Simon
Sent: 25 January 2001 23:53
To: World music from a Jewish slant
Subject: Re: jewish music databases/Keynote

How about Keynote from our friend Geraldine Auerbach at the JMI?  I don't
know if this is a feature of the software (I'll try and look later), but
perhaps if it isn't, they could make it one.  If you entered a number of
related keywords, such as alternate spellings, searching one would bring up
the others.  Geraldine, can you tell us if this is part of Keynote?  I would
also find this helpful in cataloguing.

Lorele


ro (at) panix(dot)com wrote:

> Not about music but about keeping track of and finding it:
>
> I've started cataloging my Hasidic records in an Access (ptui ptui ptui)
> database.  What I'd really like to do tho is also catalog the tunes
> themselves.
>
> A problem is inconsistant transliteration.  For example, I probably
> have a dozen different version of Lecha Dodi  or L'Cha Doidi or Lechah
> Doideh.
>
> The best solution to my mind is to enter tune names in the character
> set appropriate for the language; eg to enter Lecha Dodi in Hebrew.
> Ignoring vowel points, all the above would spell identically.
>
> I see that the Freedman Collection at the U of P seems to be able
> to do that.  My database experience in Sybase is vast, in Access
> not so vast, but in either case having diffferent languages and
> character sets for different fields is not something the DBMS
> makes particularly simple.
>
> Has anyone in this list tried such a thing?  I tried contacting
> the people who worked on the Freedman Collection but didn't hear
> from them.
>
> roger
>
> --
> r l reid        ro (at) panix(dot)com
>



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