eResource of the month: Naxos Music Library

Each month we spotlight one of our databases to highlight the range of resources available to our users. This month, Arts and Humanities Faculty Librarian Richard Pears writes about Naxos Music Library.

Naxos is one of the most important sources of recorded music for the University. It has more than 2.7 million music recordings from almost 1,000 record labels, with 600 new recordings added every month; this makes Naxos the largest classical music library available online. The largest category is classical, but there are many pop, jazz, rock, film, TV and world music recordings. You can browse by categories, artist, composer and label. The advanced search has additional criteria to search by, including instrument, time period, years of composition or release, performing group, lyricist, and duration. You can create an account and save favourite recordings or make a playlist to share with others. Most recordings also include the liner notes to give you more information. 

One of the important academic features of Naxos is the Musicology collection of essays, encounters and opinion pieces written by musicians, academic experts and music critics that provide exploration of themes, experience of composing and performing, and analysis of recordings. There’s also an authoritative dictionary of music, which provides definitions, explanatory articles and links to relevant recordings. 

Naxos is an essential resource for Music teachers, researchers and students, and for anyone wishing to share and explore music. Playlists enable lecturers to create collections of recordings for students to study. Individual recordings have permalinks and these links and playlists can be incorporated in the library reading lists for taught modules and in Blackboard Ultra. However, Naxos is available to everybody in the University, so like Box of Broadcasts and Kanopy for streaming programmes, you can use Naxos for listening to your favourite music at your leisure.  

Naxos Music Library is accessible at https://discover.durham.ac.uk/permalink/44DUR_INST/k3s6qp/alma991010036175707366 or search for “Naxos Music Library” in Discover (https://discover.durham.ac.uk/). Even better, many recordings in Naxos are listed individually in Discover, so searching by title or composer/artist will take you straight to the recording you need. Remember that in Discover’s advanced search you can select ‘Material type’ then ‘Sound recordings’ to focus on Naxos items.