'One More Once': A Centennial Celebration of the Life and Music of Count Basie

'One More Once' is one of a few digital multimedia exhibits that have been put online by the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University. Featuring an immense amount of information, this website is really pretty cool, featuring biographical information, as well as photos, music and video.

Collection Principles

The website follows the timeline of Count Basie's life, beginning with an introduction and then tracking his career from the 30's til the end of his career in the 80's. Each major time period is covered in its own page featuring in depth biographical and contextual information. Also, while you read you can listen to the music that Basie and his band were making during this era, which is a good idea except that it's just clips and so gets a bit tedious. Throughout each period are also scans of photographs and documents from the era. In addition, accompanying the page for each era is an accompanying photo essay providing further images and contextual information. After the biographical pages, one can visit the "Virtual Jukebox" and listen to more of his music. However, I couldn't get this feature to work--maybe a plug-in thing? Further, there are audio clips of other famous figures in jazz talking about Count Basie and his work, a discography, and video footage of him playing late in life, by way of a finale.

Metadata

Unfortunately there is a great lacking of metadata, especially for the great number of photographs that make up the bulk of this exhibit. However, in the case of the looping clips that play while you read, there is information regarding what the clip is an where to find it. Likewise for the "Virtual Jukebox," or what would be playing if you could get it to work.

Object Characteristics

The site is fairly laid out, though it is not without its flaws. The photo essays are a sort of flash slideshow type thing, that proves to wear on one's nerves as it tends to scrolls fairly quickly. However, the images are all of high quality, and even the audio and video come off quite well.

Intended Audience

The intended audience would be those interested in jazz, Count Basie, or those interested in seeing what kind of material the IJS has for researchers.