Search Guide

WESTERN CANADIAN REGION ARCHIVE USER GUIDE

What is the Western Canadian Region Archive?
The purpose of the Archive is to make Western Canada’s rich and extensive collection of archival documents easily available to the public. The collection consists primarily of biographical information about the Associate Composers affiliated with the Western Canadian Region and documents that reflect their work, such as concert programs, newspaper articles, interviews, personal letters, and other primary source materials. The database also aims to document performances in the Western Canadian Region of the works of Associate Composers who reside in other parts of Canada.

Building of the Archive
Pre-existing paper documents have been scanned and converted into PDF files that can be accessed easily without risk of losing or damaging the originals. Basic information criteria such as composition title, year of composition, performance dates, etc. have been selected to build the Western Canadian Region Archive. Please see below the complete list of criteria with search examples.

Based on those criteria, information from scanned documents has been extracted and entered as content of the database. A user-friendly search function is built into the database to use the same criteria to retrieve desired information. Please see below on how to use the search engine. In addition to a spreadsheet format displaying content of a given search, users can also access the PDF source document for their search. Therefore, most database entries are directly linked to a corresponding PDF file (entries without a PDF file may contain external links instead). Currently, original paper versions of these PDF files are being kept at the CMC Regional Office in Vancouver.

However, increasingly, new PDF files are being created from original digital data available to the public via the internet. This means a corresponding physical paper document for much of future entries might not necessarily exist at CMC’s Regional Office archive.

Building of this database, scanning processes, data entry, and data management has all been realized through the collaboration of a volunteer team at the CMC’s BC Regional Office. This Regional product has been created using basic conventions in library cataloguing. The database is considered to be a work in progress.

How to use the search engine
A search bar is used to locate and display the source PDF files based on the criteria selected by users.

The results of a search are displayed in a spreadsheet form. All fields are displayed by default but can be selectively excluded by unchecking the box underneath each column heading. Click on the button to redisplay all columns. Click on the column heading title to alternate sorting the data between ascending and descending order. Columns can be resized by hovering the mouse pointer over the right border of each column header (pointer will become a two-headed arrow) and then clicking and dragging to resize. Click on the + button on the left side of the table to expand the row details. Click on a PDF File number link to view the source PDF file. Click on a Composer's name link to go to the composer's page on CMC's web site.

If no criteria are chosen, all records are retrieved when the Submit button is clicked, with the most recent entries appearing first.

Useful search tips

When multiple criteria are entered, submitting the query will display only those records that fulfill all of the selected criteria combined. Naturally this may result in displaying a more limited amount of information.

Partial word searches may provide better results when the precise words or spelling are not known.

Where available, also consult composers’ own websites or other sources for more details or more precise references.

Use quotation marks around your phrase to search for an exact match.

Please note, searches are not case-sensitive.

Please contribute to the Western Canadian Region Archive
You are invited to identify materials that should be included in the Archive. These can be in the form of hard copies or digital records that are relevant to the purpose of the Archive. If you would like to contribute material to the Archive, please contact the BC Regional Office at (604) 734-4622 or via email at bcregion@musiccentre.ca. The online Archive is updated daily.

Search Criteria and Examples
SEARCH	COMMENTS	EXAMPLES
Composer	All CMC Associate Composers are listed in a drop-down list with the composer’s surname in capital letters. The names of composers affiliated with the BC Region appear in blue; composers with no data appear in gray. Click on the name of a composer to enter it into the search strategy.	ADASKIN, Murray
Premiere	Checking the Premiere box will retrieve all documents associated with the first performance of a specific composition or first performances of all compositions of the selected composer. Premiere years were not always available
Performance Date	This field can be used to retrieve performances on a specific date. The search must include the full date and must be in the format: mm/dd/yyyy as shown in the example. Unless full dates were available, the date field has been left blank.	03/17/1994
Source Date	This field can be used to retrieve source material of a specific date.	03/17/1994
Content	Content in the database is classified as belonging to one of the categories in this drop-down list. Including one of the categories in this list as part of a search limits the results to documents that have been filed in that category.	Biography
Search text	Any text entered here will also include searches for foreign characters and single quotes (apostrophes). For example, entering francois will also include results for François. Entering adaskins workshop will also include results for Adaskin's workshop.	sonic boom sonic boom 2009 "sonic boom 06"

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