Thoughts on the library sessions

In sitting through the library sessions last week I had a couple of thoughts:

• There are a lot of books on music and other musical materials in our library. While most are not on roots music, I'm always pleasantly surprised by how much good roots material there is in our library. Don't overlook the library's resources when exploring this material.
• Two major resources that came up at least indirectly are the Smithsonian, which collects and publishes large bodies of roots music. Probably the most useful thing is their Folkways section at http://www.folkways.si.edu which includes lots of recordings and a cool podcast. Check it out! Another major source is the Library of Congress (which sponsored tons of field recordings, including those by the Lomaxes) and has an enormous collection of great music that's directly relevant to the course. The main link is http://www.loc.gov/ with the Folklife section likely to be the most useful.
  

I highly recommend the Smithsonian/Folkways podcast. I'm still working through it (it's 24 episodes, each of which is a full hour!), but what I have listened to has been really good. Lots of good music, as well as excellent history of the (very important) Folkways label.

Remember that we'll have a second library session on 10 October. We can guide/structure that quite a bit if we want, so let me know (for example, here in a comment) if you have particular questions/issues that you'd like to address in that session.