Open Music Library (review)

Open Music Library (OML) is an arm of Alexander Street: A ProQuest Company, aiming to provide a platform to gather both free and fee-based online resources in the discipline of music. According to the site, "The Open Music Library is an initiative from Alexander Street to build the world's largest free index of digital resources for the study of music." (https://openmusiclibrary.org/about/, accessed 12 July 2018) As of 27 June 2018, the home page indicates that more than 215,000 people, 202,000 scores, 4,500 videos, and 1,105,900 articles are linked from the site. In addition to Alexander Street content, the site includes material from several national libraries (see https://openmusiclibrary.org/partners/), the Library of Congress, and content that has been uploaded by contributors.

The home page of the site consists of a large search box with no options for advanced or faceted searching. Scrolling down the page, we find the scope, a variety of Popular Topics tags, What's New and Featured sections, and finally the footer with more information about the OML project. The top of the page includes tabs that link directly to People, Journals, Works, Scores, Videos, Audio, Forum, and a login option for those who have established personal accounts on OML.

There are many paths to the site's contents, including the search box, the featured sections on the opening page, or the section links. Beginning with the search box, entering "Jennifer Higdon" leads to a results screen with a variety of filters in the left-hand column, including options to filter by only open access content and to exclude reviews. The results include a one entry of the content type "People" that displays the first lines of Wikipedia's entry for Higdon, as well as links to related materials in all categories of content. Clicking the People link leads to a page that serves as a sort of portal to Higdon content and that includes a link to the full Wikipedia entry on Higdon, plus links to albums featuring her compositions and a list of compositions. Interestingly, filtering by open access removes the People result (and consequently, removes the link to the Wikipedia entry), leaving only a journal entry (which is behind the Music Periodicals Database paywall) and a video from Works & Process at the Guggenheim.

The People tab allows browsing through those included in OML, but not in any discernible order, which appears to be random, rather than alphabetical or chronological. The Works tab highlights a random assortment of works, includes a pie chart of the chronological distribution of the works, and includes a set of featured genres, which link to additional tables of works, organized by title. (The alphabetization includes the usual stop words, such as A, An, The, etc.) The Scores tab begins with a set of "popular tags," followed by a handful of featured composers. The Videos tab allows browsing through the 4,654 videos included, although they are presented in no discernible order. The Audio tab features five "radio stations" (Martha Argerich, Marian Anderson, Ursula Mamlok, Leonard Bernstein, and Modest Mussorgsky), a handful of links to ensembles and playlists, and a search box.

Finally, there is the "…" tab, which when clicked expands to display links to Lists, including playlists, announcements, free downloads, etc.; the Forum for discussion of OML topics; Books, currently including Google Scholar links to 26 books; and several categories that appear to be under development, including Ephemera, Libretto, Performance, and Instruments. For each of those categories, OML staff have added questions prompts for idea of how the categories might be expanded and made more usable.

The site appears to be IP-range sensitive, and for those links that reside behind subscription paywalls, access is allowed if the user's institution subscribes. When I...