DRAM (review)

Now known simply as DRAM (the phrase "Database of Recorded American Music" appears nowhere on the site except as a "formerly" note in the mission statement), the focus of this collection remains American music, especially American contemporary music, and the core of the collection consists of recordings previously issued in physical form on the New World and CRI labels. This original collection is being expanded by the addition of content licensed from other labels with significant coverage of contemporary American music, including: Albany Records; Artifact Recordings; Cedille Records; Cold Blue Music; Deep Listening; Frog Peak Music; Innova Recordings; Lovely Music; Mode Records; Mutable Music; Open Space; Pogus Productions; and XI Records.

The electronic availability of this content, especially the landmark New World and CRI recordings, at what is a very reasonable price in the online resource marketplace, should be cause for great celebration among librarians, scholars, and all those interested in American music. Unfortunately, the utility of the database is greatly undermined by the infrastructure provided for accessing the recordings. In short, while it is relatively easy to find something interesting to listen to, finding a specific recording or a group of recordings related to a research interest is difficult or impossible due to the complete lack of topical or genre access, less-than-pristine lists of names and terms for browsing, and the squandering of the powerful indexing capabilities of Lucene by not providing users an advanced search interface. (The present review describes DRAM as it appeared and functioned in the summer and fall of 2008. In the course of preparation, I sent a summary of my criticisms of the site to Tyler Sinclair, library relations manager at DRAM. Mr. Sinclair was very receptive to my input, and acknowledged that several of my points were issues DRAM was working to address, or hoped to address in a coming redesign.)

On visiting the DRAM Web site, the user is met by a large logo and blurb, along with a "Featured Content" item. Together these two elements take up over half the screen space. Below them is a narrow band with a search box and five tabs labeled: Browse; Search; Featured Content; About; and Help. Below these are five browse lists: Composers; Performers; Ensembles; Instru ments; and Labels. Under each heading is a representative list of nine to twelve entries with a "more" link leading to the complete browse list for that category. Oddly, the examples in the "Instruments" list are not presented in alphabetical order, as are the other columns, nor are they grouped by instrument families. This apparent randomness is a sign of things to come. From the examples the user infers that "Performers" means individual musicians, while "Ensembles" refers to specifically named performing groups. There is nowhere to browse for generic types of ensemble, such as "mixed chorus," "string quartet" or "band." (The addition of genre tags is an enhancement reported to be in active development.)

Turning now to the tabs: the first is labeled "Browse," and clicking on it leads to the browse page for Performers. The category headings and images for all five browse categories appear near the top of the page, allowing the user to switch from one browse list to another. Above these, the ribbon with the search box and tabs remains, below a smaller version of the logo. Each page displays eighty entries, each accompanied by an indication of the number of database records to which it is attached. Navigation is by "next" and "previous" buttons, or by typing in a "jump to" box. In actuality, the "jump to" box functions almost like a search box: typing, for example, "gardner" will retrieve only those persons with that last name, rather than showing that part of the master list. There are no "first," "last" or specific page number...