This page is meant to help in finding information about the subject area of your term paper. Here you will find brief descriptions of a variety of research tools. We recommend that you go through each of these sources in the order listed, proceeding from general overviews to more specific material as you narrow and focus your topic.
Reserve ML160 .G882 2006
In the process of looking for a subject to write on, and as you settle on a subject area, be sure to skim through your textbook. Make sure that you understand what aspects of the topic we will be likely to cover in class so that you can go beyond them in your paper. Look also at the section "For Further Reading" at the end of the book, which gives a bibliography of general sources and of sources related to each part, chapter, and section. These sources are generally the standard works in each subject area, and they will be good places to begin your reading.
Online at www.grovemusic.com
Reference ML100 .G92 (on the index tables)
The New Grove Dictionary is the principal English-language encyclopedia of music. In it you will find entries on all of the composers and genres and many of the terms that we will be discussing this semester. Almost all entries in this work have useful bibliographies. The online version can be searched. (For fun, look up the articles on your teachers.)
Reference ML100 .B67
Reference ML100 .B68 (Second revised edition)
This is a German encyclopedia of music, much like The New Grove Dictionary. If you can read German this source will be very useful. Even if you do not have German skills, however, you should still take a look at MGG. As in The New Grove Dictionary, almost all the entries have bibliographies that include English language sources.
Online at www.iucat.iu.edu
IUCAT, the Indiana University on-line CATalogue, lists all holdings (and their locations) for library materials at all IU campuses. You can access IUCAT through the Cook Music Library homepage. IUCAT is most useful for locating books about your subject and finding the call numbers for journals and magazines. Remember that IUCAT does NOT contain the titles of individual articles in journals.
Online at www.hppmusicindex.com
Reference ML1 .M823 (Index Table)
The Music Index is a guide to articles about music in magazines, journals, and some books. The Music Index is available in two forms, and you will probably want to use both. There is a paper version which is issued monthly with annual cumulations. These can be found on the Index Table in the Music Library. It is important to remember that the hardbound volumes index only one year's worth of material, so you will need to search each volume individually. The Music Index is also available online. The online version, however, covers only 1979 to the present, and so you will have to use the paper version for earlier decades. Once you have found the title and location of an article you want, look up the title of the journal on IUCAT to find its call number.
Online
Reference ML1 .I62 (Index Table)
Don't be scared away by the title (full title: Répertoire International de la Littérature Musicale: RILM Abstracts); virtually all the information in RILM is in English. Like Music Index, RILM contains references to articles about music in articles, reviews, books, dissertations, essays, bibliographies, catalogs, introductions to critical works, discographies, Festschriften (collections of articles in honor of someone), periodicals, congress and conference reports, and yearbooks. In addition, many of the entries have a brief summary (abstract), in English!
You will need to use both Music Index and RILM since the two sources cover different materials.
ProQuest is an online collection of databases. Most useful to you will be the database Interdisciplinary--Dissertations & Theses, the successor to Dissertation Abstracts, which contains references to and abstracts for dissertations worldwide. You can also order an online copy of a dissertation through ProQuest. Among the other databases on ProQuest are full texts of newspapers such as The New York Times and The Washington Post.
A few other online sources may be useful in your search:
The Indiana University Bloomington Libraries Homepage has links to many online databases and online full-text journals. Especially useful is the Music Databases page.
The sources listed above are those that are most likely to be useful for virtually all topics. There are, however, many, many other, more specialized sources. Be sure to check the following:
You will also find it useful to consult with the staff at the Reference desk in the Music Library. They offer online services as well, including the following:
Last updated: 21 August 2007
URL: http://www.music.indiana.edu/som/courses/m401/M401resear.html
This page was designed and created by Patrick Warfield and is
maintained by J. Peter Burkholder
Copyright © 1997-2007 by Patrick Warfield and J. Peter
Burkholder