This week in class we discussed open educational resources. We discussed what copyright and public domain is, and we were introduced to some great resources such as Siyavula for textbooks, OER Commons and Curriki for content, and Archive.org which is a multimedia resource that seems to have a little bit of everything to suit every educator’s needs.

As a musician, I am already familiar with and have explored the world of public domain resources.  A website that I visit frequently is IMSLP, the Petrucci Music Library. IMSLP is a place where people can search for scores, recordings, individual parts, and arrangements/transcriptions of nearly any piece of music that is on public domain. All scores and parts can be downloaded to your computer in PDF format for free. Often there is a ton of information about the piece at the bottom of the page such as the key, duration, instrumentation, what time period it was composed in, etc. It is honestly the easiest and most convenient way to access music at this time, and every musician I know uses it.

If anyone wants to explore this resource a bit, here is a link to my favourite symphony, Antonin Dvořák’s Symphony No.9, “From the New World:” https://imslp.org/wiki/Symphony_No.9%2C_Op.95_(Dvo%C5%99%C3%A1k%2C_Anton%C3%ADn)