*Please note! A high speed Internet connection is required to access and play videos.

iPhone and iPad users note: the AlexanderStreet, Mango and Tumblebooks databases require Adobe Flash player.

All Alexander Street Collections are available from home with a TCPL Library card and are funded by the Tompkins County Public Library.

Opera in Video

Opera in Video contains 250 of the most important opera performances, captured on video through staged productions, interviews, and documentaries, and then delivered online through streaming video. Selections represent the worlds best performers, conductors, and opera houses and are based on a works importance to the operatic canon.

World Music & Sounds Collection

African American Song
With jazz, blues, gospel, and other forms of African American musical expression represented, African American Music brings 50,000 tracks of music to the ears of library patrons and music scholars. The collection contains recordings by the top names in the history of black American music. At least 5,000 of the tracks are rare or never-before-published. Its the first online resource to document the history of African American music in the form of an online music listening service. Users search using a powerful interface, identify the music and performances they want to hear, and click to listen through speakers or headphones.

American Song Collection
American Song is a database of 50,000 songs that users listen to over the Internet. It will allow people to hear and feel the music from our past. Much more than a repository of well known classics like Yankee Doodle and The Star Spangled Banner, this new resource includes music that relates to almost every walk of American life, every ethnic group, and every time period. Youll find songs by and about American Indians, miners, immigrants, slaves, children, pioneers, and cowboys. There are the songs of Civil Rights, political campaigns, Prohibition, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and anti-war protests. There are hymns, funny songs, college songs, sea shanties, shape note songs, and songs about topics as diverse as New York and electricity.

Classical Music Library
Classical Music Library is an ever-growing, fully searchable classical music resource and comprehensive database of distinguished classical recordings. It includes tens of thousands of licensed recordings that users can listen to on the Internet. Selections range from the earliest Gregorian chants to works by modern composers including symphonic music, vocal and instrumental music, choral works, operas, the avant-garde, and other forms. Users browse, search, click, and then listen to the music over the Internet through their headphones.

Contemporary World Music
Contemporary World Music takes listeners around the globe to experience the vibrancy, history, customs, politics, personalities, struggles, and joys of diverse peoples and cultures. The database contains 50,000 tracks that you can organize and share using personal play lists and course folders. The breadth of this collection is impressive, incorporating contemporary reggae, worldbeat, neo-traditional, world fusion, Balkanic jazz, African film, Bollywood, Arab swing and jazz, and other genres. Traditional music such as Indian classical, fado, flamenco, klezmer, zydeco, gospel, gagaku is also featured to round out the offerings and allow you to see the progression that music has made through the ages.

Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries
Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries is a virtual encyclopedia of the world's musical and aural traditions. The collection provides educators, students, and interested listeners with an unprecedented variety of online resources that support the creation, continuity, and preservation of diverse musical forms. The database includes an extraordinary array of more than 35,000 individual tracks of music, spoken word, and natural and human-made sounds. The collection also encompasses animal sounds, beer-drinking at an African homestead; calypso; classical violin instruction; drama; poetry; sounds of the deep ocean, the office, and the ionosphere; a frog being eaten by a snake; and great performances of traditional music from virtually everywhere in the world.