On March 24, CDRS and the Center for Jazz Studies will formally launch Jazz Studies Online, a web-based resource that will serve as a central portal for the collection and dissemination of scholarly research and educational materials in the new interdisciplinary field of jazz studies. Visit the website at jazzstudiesonline.org.
The scholarly and educational content of Jazz Studies Online features papers, book excerpts, colloquium proceedings, bibliographies, links to digital libraries, and teaching materials. The project includes material for researchers, teachers interested in effectively incorporating the perspectives of this new field into ongoing classes and programs, jazz artists, and the general public.
The creation of Jazz Studies Online is made possible by a three-year grant from the Ford Foundation, which has been a generous supporter of the Center for Jazz Studies since its inception in 1999. This resource will support the Center’s educational mission by promoting scholarly research and writing in this emerging field, and providing for the first time a site that provides links and tools for the basic understanding of jazz, as well as exploring the influence of jazz on other arts.
The site offers a digital resource library, including author and artist interviews, short essays, book excerpts, video recordings of performances, interviews, and colloquia, scholarly papers, and feature articles. Jazz Studies Online also includes a multimedia Jazz Glossary, developed by the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning, with definitions, short essays, and audio and visual demonstrations of a variety of jazz vocabulary terms. More long-term goals include the development of a collaborative environment for digital scholarship, and jazz curricula and teaching tools.
In addition to offering this significant compendium of jazz materials, Jazz Studies Online serves as a portal through which users can find the best jazz resources and Web sites available on the Internet. Scholars, teachers, students, and jazz aficionados will find links organized around jazz artists, locales, eras, and styles– swing, bebop, Latin jazz, free jazz, fusion, and much more. Importantly, JSO will make jazz scholarship accessible to those who lack access to urban centers, universities or performance venues, filling a void in the field of jazz scholarship.
“Jazz Studies Online is the first resource of its kind, a vital example of our mission at the Center,” said George Lewis, Director of the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia. “We want to harness the power of digital media to encourage the interdisciplinary expansion of the intellectual conversation surrounding jazz, developing new knowledge that illuminates the human condition.”
Jazz Studies Online will be progressively developed over the next three years and is managed by the Center for Jazz Studies and the Center for Digital Research and Scholarship at Columbia University.