The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Online (review)

The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Online is the online version of the venerable ten-volume Garland Encyclopedia of World Music (1998, 2002). Originally released in 2006, this database relaunched in 2008 with access to the accompanying CD content. The material is identical to that in the print volumes, with the addition of individual and musical group biographies from All Music Guide. Since little new material is offered, this review focuses primarily on the interface, its search and browse capabilities, and image and sound quality. Reviews of the individual print volumes abound in various journals, including Booklist, Journal of the American Musicological Society, Ethnomusicology, Music Educators Journal, Library Journal, Library Quarterly and Notes.¹

The interface to the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Online has the look and feel of other Alexander Street Press (ASP) database offerings. It presents the same banner background and toolbar headings: Home, Browse, Advanced Search, Playlists, What's New, Help, and a search box with drop-down limiters. The left sidebar offers "browse" and "genre" options. Like other ASP databases, the Web site has navigation terms in English, Spanish and Chinese (although the content is only in English). It is not priced by number of simultaneous users, and there are no subsets.

The first nine volumes of the print series focus on geographic areas, while the tenth provides general fieldwork perspectives and reference tools. The geographically-centered works are divided into three sections: 1) overview of the region, its musics and cultures, 2) issues and processes that link the region's musics, and 3) explorations of specific music cultures. Variations of this structure exist, as editors crafted their volume to suit the unique needs of the region.

This product mirrors the print content down to page numbers. Hence, the organizational scheme is maintained; sections (which in this review include all parts, sections, articles, snapshots, overviews, and any other such term used by the Garland editors) appear as individual Web pages and range from one paragraph to the equivalent of dozens of print pages. As a result, some Web pages are quite long. Page numbers, which indicate page breaks in the print volumes, are interspersed in the text, along with photos. Many page numbers offer hyperlinks to an enlargeable JPEG image of the original print page. Unfortunately, some pages lack these hyperlinks, so not all of the print pages are viewable. Not a single volume has all of the page hyperlinks, and Volume 3 lacks them entirely. According to ASP, all page numbers should have JPEG hyperlinks and this situation is an oversight.

At the top of a given section, a drop-down lists all of the volume's other sections, and has hyperlinked text for "previous item" and "next item." These navigation features are useful, but I wish that they were also at the bottom of the page. This would make navigation easier by eliminating the need to scroll back up after reading a section.

Pull quotes from the print volumes are absent from the Web version, and names of contributors appear in the bibliographic information at the top of the page rather than under the section title. Because the author's name is not prominently displayed, attributions for sections are sometimes difficult to locate. In some instances, it is unclear who authored a given section; when viewed online, J. Lawrence Witzle-ben's "A Profile of East Asian Musics and Cultures" from Volume 7, p. 3, is unattributed and does not have a corresponding JPEG of the print volume for reference.

The Web-based...