Back in May we announced the first ever occasion that all the New College Choir discs were available to view in the same place - on our Facebook page. This was the first step in the process of making our entire discography available to view.

We sell a lot of our discs through our shop, but these only represent around half of what we've recorded; up until now there has been no public catalogue of all 110+ New College discs.

From today this comprehensive list is now live on our website. You can sort by composer, name or release date, or you can view all the album artwork in high resolution on the album covers page. You can still view high resolution scans of album backs (including LPs) but these remain exclusive to our Facebook page.

Just as important is the history of recording at New College and a page dedicated to our own label Novum; neither of these is entirely new, but both have been updated, given more prominence and separated from the shop.

We hope this long-overdue section will be of interest and a useful reference point - do let us know what you think in the comments!

Yesterday we uploaded a new photo album to our Facebook page: it's a collection of album covers that we believe to be more or less our entire discography. This is the first time many of these album covers (and certainly the LPs) have been available to view all in one place and in high resolution. At the bottom of each individual image there is a link to the corresponding back cover, including track list.

While many of our discs are available to browse in our shop (currently 56), our full discography comprises of over 110 individual releases (and a good few box sets). In the coming months we'll be looking at how best to present this discography, and this is the first step in that process.

You don't need a Facebook account to view the discography image album - click on any thumbnail to open the full size picture: view here.

After over a year of discussion and months of building, today finally sees the launch of our brand new website. This isn't just a redesign, but a completely new build, so please bear with us while we iron out any problems that pop up!

First and foremost: this website has been built, and is now maintained, completely in-house at New College using an online publishing platform. Particularly for our regular online visitors, I've summarised some of the new additions to the website that I hope you'll find both useful and interesting.

What are the main changes?

• Clarity. Let's actually start with something we've tried not to change. One of the most common compliments we had on our outgoing website was its simplicity and clarity. We hope that, despite the new look, layout, images and features, you still find our website easy to use with information that's both clear and correct. Of course, we'd like to hear from you if you don't think that's the case!
• News. All our news will come through this blog from now on. It enables us to categorize stories as well as to file them by date. Both these lists you'll be able to see over to the right: they enable you to view all news on a particular topic (for example, our tour diaries) or all news from a certain month.
  
• Music List. We've sadly had to do away with the automatic display of the current day's music - one of the downsides of managing a website in-house is that we have to be economical with the time it takes us to maintain it - and unfortunately this functionality didn't pass that test. What we do now offer is the additional option of downloading the music list as a PDF, as well as the Chapel term card and the organ music list.
• Buying our CDs. Lots of changes here. We now use RBS WorldPay to process payments so that our customers can be sure that buying directly from New College Choir is safe and secure. There's a new browse list, where you can sort by composer, album name and release date, and there's also a search bar where you can search for the name of any track, album, artist (e.g. a particular orchestra) or composer. A selection of our available CDs are featured on the main page of our shop. While we sell nearly 60 of our CDs currently, this represents only around half of our entire discography; in the coming months we'll be looking at compiling a comprehensive discography resource for the website.

What's new?

• Information. We've added further information on Lay Clerks, the Choir Partnership Programme, Chorister Open Days, Choral and Organ scholarships and Choral Services.
• Social Media. Over the past year we've set up Facebook, YouTube and Twitter presences so that supporters and friends of the Choir can easily keep up to date with our news. Using these services also means that we can spread what we do to people who wouldn't otherwise hear the Choir, as well as make it easier for anyone to get in contact with us. Many of the pages on this site have share buttons on them to make it easier for you to share anything you find interesting with friends, and we've also now got a page which explains our maintained presences on other sites so that the purpose of our use of them is both clear and defined.
• Webcast Archive. At the beginning of every term, our list of available webcasts is 'refreshed' with the first new service of the term. While we think it's important not to have services up too long, and to reflect the University term structure that choral services at New College follow, taking popular webcasts down has disappointed some people. Our new webcast archive has a selection of performances from choral services at New College that are no longer available on the webcast player. Some you'll find were never published as a webcast and so are available to listen online for the first time.
  
• Directions. There is an assortment of directions and maps to help new visitors who wish to come to a service at New College.
• Sample tracks. Almost every CD page now has a sample track for you to listen to online - even ones that are many years old.
  

That's more than enough for now - please do have a browse, and feel free either to tell us what you think by commenting below, or contact us directly: we very much hope you like it!

Benjamin Sheen
Academical Clerk

Read Andrew Mellor's Gramophone article article on the chapels and churches which stream their services.