Monday, January 13, 2014

New Semester, New Interface on Alexander Street Press


Happy New Semester! To celebrate our fresh new semester we're rolling out the fresh new look for Alexander Street Press (ASP).

Alexander Street Press has updated their interface. We are in the process of moving all of our links to the new links. The searching will still work either way, but if you want to use the new interface, just go to the Music Research Guide here: http://uncg.libguides.com/mus and go to the Audio/Video Recordings tab. Or just go straight to this page: http://search.alexanderstreet.com.libproxy.uncg.edu/music-performing-arts 

It is pretty user friendly, but just in case, here is a handy page of tutorials (on searching, making playlists and creating clips) made by Alexander Stree Press to help you with adjusting to the new interface: http://alexanderstreet.com/support-center/resources/alexander-street-press-video-tutorials

More information:

Here’s what you can experience in the first release:
       Powerful faceted browsing capabilities: Browse content with “smart facets” that change as you search, allowing you quickly to find exactly what you’re looking for. It’s as if the interface knows what you’re asking.
       A new video player and toolbar that lets you bookmark your place in a video, choose between multiple layouts; and bit-rate streaming that automatically adjusts to the highest quality file the user’s bandwidth can support. This is all in addition to the functionality you expect in Alexander Street video: thumbnails, visual table of contents, and clip and playlist creation.
       A waveform view on our audio player pages that lets you view the music being played and create, annotate, and share audio clips.
       Discipline- and genre-based landing pages with featured content and editorially-curated playlists.
       The ability to translate every page, liner note, and transcript into dozens of languages using Google Translate.
       Tools for exporting citations in MLA, Chicago, and APA formats.

And here’s what will be available on the new interface over the next year:
       A dedicated smartphone app, in addition to the “send to mobile” tool you’re already using.
       Outbound discovery—your Alexander Street content will link out to select Internet archives, greatly expanding the content available to your users at no charge, and all semantically indexed to make it cross-searchable with the other Alexander Street content.
       Fully text-searchable liner notes displayed along select albums.
       Most content within the music video products will have searchable, scrolling transcripts alongside the videos.
       Dedicated learning object apps that let you:
       Develop online quizzes
       Create digital study guides
       Build timelines

Also, be aware that in our transitional time it might say “access denied,” the track might still play, so be sure to try listening before you give up. I’m sure that will be resolved soon. And let me know (sbdorsey@uncg.edu) if you have frustrations and we’ll get you connected asap! Thank you for your patience!