Several large, online listening services are now available to all faculty, staff, and students through the UCSB Libraries.

The new services, comprising more than a quarter of a million tracks of classical music, jazz, world music, and more, are African American Song, Classical Music Library, Naxos Music Library, Naxos Music Library Jazz, and Smithsonian Global Sound.

“Together these music databases offer the UCSB community a rich resource for research and teaching across a broad range of interdisciplinary areas,” says Eunice Schroe­der, music librarian in the Arts Library.

As with most of the library’s online subscription databases, the new listening services can be accessed both on campus and off by UCSB personnel. Users off campus must configure their computers to connect with the library’s proxy server or VPN (see <www.library.ucsb.edu/help/offcampus.html>).

To access these services, go to the library’s home page <www.library.ucsb.edu> and click on “Research,” then “Article Indexes and Databases,” and scroll down. The UCSB Libraries, in partnership with other UC libraries and the California Digital Library, are sponsoring this expansion. Schroeder can be reached at x3612 if questions arise.

All of the collections offer real-time streaming, and three of them (African American Song, Classical Music Library, and Smithsonian Global Sound) also offer downloads for purchase. Not all the collections are complete, at this point.

Classical music, on dozens of record labels and including medieval chant through the latest works from the 21st-century, is available from Naxos Music Library and Classical Music Library.

Naxos Music Library Jazz contains nearly 20,000 tracks of jazz, blues, and R&B from more than 1,900 albums.

A valuable historical perspective on American music can be found in African American Song, which includes early blues, folk, ragtime, jazz, calypso, gospel, and more, performed by well-known musicians like Mamie Smith and Jelly Roll Morton as well as lesser known artists.

Smithsonian Global Sound offers a wide range of music from many cultures outside of the United States, as well as American old-time, blues, bluegrass, folk, and more. The database includes the published recordings of the Smithsonian Folkways label and other archival audio collections.