In June I had the privilege of representing KMEA at the NAfME State Editors meeting, a part of the 2013 NAfME National Assembly in Virginia, as a member of the Kansas Music Review publication team. While most states continue to publish their journals in print format, a small number of states are beginning to put their publications on the web.

Different Online Formats
There are several ways in which states are putting their journals online. A number of states take the final PDF copy of their print magazine and post it online. This is in addition to printing the hard-copy magazine. There are a few states that continue to design their magazine the usual way and upload the final PDF to the web, but then do not print a hard-copy magazine. For these magazines, the PDF file can only be read by downloading the entire file and opening it with a PDF application such as Adobe Reader™. Other states use online magazine services which display content in "flip-page" format, which is just as adverse to readability as PDFs. The viewer cannot quickly jump between issues, and there generally is not an index of articles to help the visitor find content. Due to screen resolution limitations, these are not great solutions as much of the text is quite small and difficult to read. Small print in advertisements is completely lost amongst the pixels. Plus there are no media elements, such as embedded audio or video, for the reader to view, and ads are not linked to advertisers.

For the Kansas Music Review, there were many hours of discussion, planning, research, phone calls, emails, board meetings, and of course, web programming, to get to where we are now. Unlike many other states, our online journal is purely web-based. This allows an author to include mp3 audio and YouTube video content directly in the articles. Viewers may listen to music while reading about music. Novel concept!

Other States Catching On
Our work has not gone unnoticed. West Virginia MEA recently decided to take their journal Notes a Tempo (notesatempo.org) online as well with no print version, and they also decided to make it web-based, rather than upload a PDF. WVMEA Editor Greg DeVito cited the Kansas Music Review as the model that they hope to emulate over time. Following the State Editors meeting, he and I reviewed some of the code elements that drive the KMR and also looked at how Notes a Tempo is coming along. I could see in his work many of the same questions that we had to address here in Kansas, so it was helpful for me to have that as a refresher lesson on how far we have come. I look forward to seeing West Virginia's progress over time.

Advertisers
Our advertisers are able to get their message out to an even larger audience with the online Kansas Music Review since it is available to educators, students, parents, advocates, and friends of music, (ie, potential customers) from around the world. During the past 12 months, the KMR was visited over 5,000 times by visitors from 51 different countries as well as all 50 states. Advertisers may submit a URL with their ad. Visitors who click on an ad are then taken to that URL. Advertisers could set up a unique URL on their own site in order to track how well their ad performs. Likewise, we are also developing ad performance reports that will be available in the near future.

Uses for Video
Beginning with the 2013 Spring issue, KMEA President Avian Bear is submitting her President's Messages as videos only (Spring 2013, Fall 2013). The closing General Business session of 2013 ISW was recorded to video and included in the 2013 Spring issue. This page contains the acceptance speeches from our 2013 KMEA Hall of Fame awardees. We intend to continue recording these speeches for future issues of the KMR. This is a valuable resource that will be treasured by our Hall of Famers over the years, and we've already received notes of gratitude from family members who were unable to attend the 2013 award ceremony.

Web Permission Form
At the June 2013 KMEA Board Meeting, the board adopted a Web Permission Form (broadcast release) that will allow us to post recordings and pictures of performance groups from future In-Service Workshops to the KMR. This does not mean that KMEA will be recording full performances for web purposes. This will allow KMEA to post the visual and or aural presence of performance groups on the KMEA website or in the KMR.

Support our Advertisers!
As always, we encourage our readers to support the advertisers found in the Kansas Music Review (current advertisers). Without their participation, the KMR simply would not exist!