National Library of Australia - Gateways

ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 59| October 2002


MusicAustralia Pilot Available Online MusicAustralia logo
The first known publication of ‘Waltzing Matilda’, with music by Marie Cowan and words by Banjo Paterson.  Published in 1905, this edition is believed to have been issued as promotional material for James Inglis & Co. Ltd, Sydney, whose advertisement for Billy Tea appears on the back cover of the music. Noel Williams 1940 arrangement of Marie Cowan’s ‘Waltzing Matilda’, billed as the ‘unofficial Australian National Anthem’  and including a photo of ‘The Second Australian Imperial Force marching through Sydney singing “Waltzing Matilda”’
The first known publication of ‘Waltzing Matilda’, with music by Marie Cowan and words by Banjo Paterson.  Published in 1905, this edition is believed to have been issued as promotional material for James Inglis & Co. Ltd, Sydney, whose advertisement for Billy Tea appears on the back cover of the music.
http://nla.gov.au/nla.mus-an7412026
Noel Williams 1940 arrangement of Marie Cowan’s ‘Waltzing Matilda’, billed as the ‘unofficial Australian National Anthem’  and including a photo of ‘The Second Australian Imperial Force marching through Sydney singing “Waltzing Matilda”’
http://nla.gov.au/nla.mus-an5749765


Thomas Wood’s 1940 choral arrangement of Marie Cowan’s ‘Waltzing Matilda’, part of the Oxford Choral Songs series. Thomas Wood’s piano arrangement of ‘Waltzing Matilda’, by Marie Cowan, arranged by Thomas Wood for piano.  Thomas Wood’s 1941 piano arrangement of Marie Cowan’s ‘Waltzing Matilda’
Thomas Wood’s 1940 choral arrangement of Marie Cowan’s ‘Waltzing Matilda’, part of the Oxford Choral Songs series.
http://nla.gov.au/nla.mus-an6012202

Thomas Wood’s piano arrangement of ‘Waltzing Matilda’, by Marie Cowan, arranged by Thomas Wood for piano
Thomas Wood’s 1941 piano arrangement of Marie Cowan’s ‘Waltzing Matilda’
http://nla.gov.au/nla.mus-an4784490

In the last edition of Gateways, the National Library announced the release of its Digital Music Collection. More than 2000 pieces of Australia’s printed music heritage are now available online through URL links in item catalogue records. The Digital Music Collection has already attracted favourable feedback from users who appreciate its qualities of being remarkably true to the experience of handling original print music items.

MusicAustralia—a new service being jointly developed by the National Library and ScreenSound Australia, National Screen and Sound Archive—aims to go even further in the quest to provide users with a rich online experience of Australia’s music heritage, wherever and in whatever digital format it is held.

MusicAustralia will first develop a federated resource discovery service, based on the very successful PictureAustralia model. The resource discovery service will allow users to locate and use contemporary and heritage digital music and music-related resources in a variety of formats and from a range of institutions and sectors, via a single web interface.

While the full production service will not be available until the second half of 2003, the first stage of MusicAustralia development resulted in a pilot, which is available for trial at www.musicaustralia.org. The MusicAustralia Pilot content base is small—just 170 items from four institutions—and was carefully selected to test requirements for delivering music-related items in a wide range of formats and to explore and demonstrate the rich relationships between printed and performed music materials held by different institutions.

The MusicAustralia Pilot allows users to discover digitised printed music, digitised audio recordings, ‘born digital’ scores and pdf derivatives, text, pictures and manuscript items. Users can:

The MusicAustralia project team has already logged a long series of issues that need to be incorporated into specifications for the discovery service. While some of these are relatively minor, others are not. The team is currently investigating the benefits of various data models to support the development of navigational pathways between related items; how to expose rich content which is buried deep within ‘containers’ such as oral history recordings; and grappling with how best to deliver digitised audio and multimedia objects to users without access to broadband internet services.

Alongside work on the resource discovery service, the MusicAustralia team is also modelling directory and interactive services for future development. MusicAustralia users will ultimately be able to access and navigate a rich store of information on Australian music, musicians, organisations and services from a single access point. Perhaps we will all finally learn the words of ‘Advance Australia Fair’?

For further information visit the MusicAustralia web site at: www.musicaustralia.org or Email: musaust@nla.gov.au
—Marie-Louise Ayres, Project Manager, MusicAustralia

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