Library

Access the School Library Catalogue online!

The Library aims to provide students with a comfortable, supportive and welcoming environment. Its staff all have a specialist knowledge of, and an interest in, music or drama and will always do their best to help you.


Library

The services that the Library offers include:

Lending facilities for books on music, theatre, drama criticism, stagecraft, costume, and music therapy. There is also a comprehensive collection of plays, poetry, scores, sets of chamber music parts and DVD recordings. Items not immediately available can be reserved and the Library responds to requests for new material either by purchase or loan from external sources. Teaching and performance material is provided for curricular use. A complete set of Orchestral Excerpts on CD-ROM gives access to a huge collection of instrumental excerpts for exam and audition use.

The loan collection includes a Student Counselling section, available to all users of the Library, which contains professionally recommended books and information on healthy eating, stress management, relationship guidance, etc.

Reference and study facilities are in the Westrup Library which occupies the upper floor of the Library. In addition to the main study area which houses the Westrup and Reference collections of books and scores, there is a Drama Library, an Audio-Visual Aisle and a Computer Area, each with additional study facilities. The Audio-Visual Aisle has study carrels with listening facilities for CD, black disc, mini-disc, DAT, cassette and radio, and video and DVD players for viewing operas and plays. The audio collections include over 8,500 recordings (black disc and CD) for reference use only, and over 1,900 videos and DVDs which can be borrowed over the weekend.

The Computer Area houses a range of multimedia workstations. The facilities available at these workstations include Internet access, email, word-processing and the ability to compose, arrange and print music scores and parts using sequencing and Sibelius notation software. The Library staff give individual tuition and assistance to students who are unfamiliar with word-processing or other software.

E-resources including New Grove Online, RILM, RIPM, Music Index, the International Index to Music Periodicals, the International Index to the Performing Arts, X-Refer Plus, JSTOR, the Encyclopedia Britannica and the Catalogue of Printed Music are also available for searching. Results can be printed out. Access to these resources from home or elsewhere outside the School can be requested using an Athens password, available from the I.T. Department.

The Guildhall School was the first conservatoire in the UK to offer its students and staff access to both Naxos and Classical Music Library web-streaming services, via state-of-the-art audio terminals in the Library. This new service has been made possible by a generous donation from the Worshipful Company of Clothworkers.

All new students are offered an introductory tutorial on the use of the Library, including instruction in the use of the on-line computer catalogue. This tutorial is supplemented by a series of leaflets on specific aspects of library use. The Library also produces bibliographies of library resources in various subject areas, and has further helpful resources, including lists of most recent items added to stock, and Internet links on the School's intranet.

The Library Catalogue is now available via this website and the School intranet, allowing users to check stock holdings when the Library is not open.

For further information, please contact: Library@gsmd.ac.uk.