Music

CLIO Catalog

CLIO is the online catalog to Columbia University Libraries (including Barnard), but excluding Teacher's College and the Law Library who maintain their own catalogs. CLIO contains over 7 million records for books, online resources, journals & newspapers, conference proceedings, sound recordings & scores, videos, archival collections & oral history transcripts, online databases, maps & images, and more!

CLIO Search Tips:

• Use the Catalog Search to find books, journal and newspaper titles, media materials, musical scores, archival collections and databases (but not articles within databases). You can also find maps and atlases.
• Article Search allows you to search articles indexed in all of Columbia's databases
• Search for specific e-journal titles using the E-journal Title search
• Use the link to Borrow Direct or Interlibrary Loan when the book or media item is checked out.

Finding CDs, LPs, VHS, & DVDs

While many sound recordings and videos are available online, the majority of classical, jazz, folk, pre-21st century popular music, and video recordings are still only available in hard-copy, most often due to licensing and rights issues. In addition, streaming quality is often lower-quality more compressed. You can find CDs, LPs (records), VHS and DVDs in CLIO.
 

Finding Music in CLIO

It's not always obvious what format a recording is in. The collection contains some LPs, LaserDisc, and VHS. LPs will include in their description the phrase "analog, 33 1/3 rpm" while CDs will be listed as being 4 3/4 in. The call numbers for recordings will also normally include their format. See screenshots below for examples.

Sound recordings can come in four formats in CLIO:

• Music - Recording
• Audio Recording (Non-muscial)
• Online
• Video

Playing CDs, DVDs, or VHS tapes

At Barnard

Barnard Library has portable CD/DVD drives that can be checked out at the circulation desk for four hours at a time. The drives work on both Macs and Windows, and connect via an attached USB cable. No software is required to use them! They can be used with a personal computer or a library lab computer. 

The Barnard Library has four media viewing stations on the south side of the Milstein Center second floor (see floorplan) - these are able to play both VHS and DVDs.

Columbia: Butler Media Collections

Viewing stations are located in Butler 401 (the Periodicals & Microform Reading Room) and support the playback of multiple visual and audio formats. Equipment includes multi-standard VCRs, multi-standard and multi-code DVD players, audiocassette players, and a laserdisc/DVD/CD player. Two viewing stations are equipped with Blu-ray players.

Priority is given to patrons viewing course-related films.