how to find literature about music cambridge university library clemens gresser deputy head of music...

How to find literature about music

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

Clemens GresserDeputy Head of MusicCambridge University Library / Pendlebury Library

Karl W. Gehrkens,‘Why Music Camps? Why Music Camps?’, in Music Educators Journal, 21/1 (Sep. 1934), pp. 15-23

Peter Coulson Edwards‘Cheap Music Books’, inThe Musical Times and Singing Class Circular, 24,/

490, 1 Dec. 1883, p. 684

Why should I bother?

• To speed up how and where you find music literature

• To find quality academic sources for your research

• To produce better work more quickly

so that…

Why should I bother? – cont.

• you have more time to play music

Bill Sargent


• you have more time to listen to music


• Or more time for…

…. anything really.

Where do I start?

Depends…..

Where you are starting from?

Start at the very beginning – not knowing anything about the subject

Gamelan?

-> Start with Oxford Music Online -> simple search:

Start at the very beginning – Oxford Music Online/NG

Start at the beginning – MGG (analogue!)

Start at the very beginning – MGG (analogue!)

• Section II. and section II.b. and section II.g.

• Then go to end of entry on “Indonesien”

Start at the very beginning – MGG (analogue!)

One easy step ahead: Oxford Music Online/NG (2)

Overview of citation databases

• Citation databases (via eresources@cambridge)

• Either via

www.lib.cam.ac.uk/eresources/

Or

http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/eresources/

Overview of citation databases - RILM

RILM: www.rilm.org/

• over 620,000 records in 214 languages (plus abstracts in English)

• from 151 countries, from Albania to Zimbabwe

• over 10,000 journals covered / mostly music & scholarly journals

• from 1967 to present

Overview of citation databases - RIPM

RIPM: www.ripm.org/

• 684,000 citations, for journals -> 20 countries

• Annotated index to 189 historic music journals

• New titles added every six months

• Detailed C19 ‘chronicle of music and musical life’

• Covers 1766 to 1962.

Overview of citation databases – Music Index

Music Index: http://www.ebscohost.com/public/music-index

• over 1 million records to mostly indexes to English-language publications

• more than 480 periodicals

• very useful for non-classical music, also for music business-related journals


Overview of citation databases – WoK (A&HCI)

Web of Knowledge: http://wok.mimas.ac.uk/

• Arts & Humanities Citation Index covers more than 2,300 highly-academic journals

• since 2000, author abstracts available with citation

• offers an alerting service and citation mapping.


Overview of citation databases – Scopus

Scopus: http://www.info.sciverse.com/scopus

• indexes nearly 19,500 peer-reviewed journals from across all disciplines together (see http://www.info.sciverse.com/documents/files/scopus-training/resourcelibrary/xls/title_list.xlsx)

• useful for ‘music & science’ research

Overview of citation databases – BHI

British Humanities Index

• More than 866,000 records

• More than 400 humanities journals, magazines and newspapers published in the UK & other English-speaking countries

• At least 30 publications deemed useful for music searches (in “narrow sense”); check http://www.csa.com/factsheets/supplements/bhi.php

Overview of citation databases - BMo

Bibliographie des Musikschrifttums online www.musikbibliographie.de/

• free web resource

• despite its name: English interface, international and polyglot

• More than 300,000 records

• since 1950!

Overview of citation databases – Google Scholar

Google Scholar scholar.google.co.uk/

• free web resource

• use Advanced Search for greater control (e.g. search only in Social Sciences, Arts, and Humanities).

Further ways of finding literature on music

JSTOR

• On campus via http://www.jstor.org or via eresources@cambridge

• Search full-text via all journals and disciplines

• Search all music journals (out of 86, we have access to 83 -> Advanced Search

• Search only 1, or a secletion of jnls -> advanced Search

http://www.jstor.org/

Further ways of finding literature on music

Dissertations & Theses

(ProQuest Digital Dissertations)

• On campus via eresources@cambridge

• Under ‘Database’ pick ‘Interdisciplinary – Dissertations & Theses’

• Search!

• Can “Limit results to: “Full text documents only”

Issues to be aware of when searching full-text!

• Modern concepts might not have been known by modern name:

e.g. a text on ‘gender’ and ‘music’ might neither contain the words “gender” nor “gender studies”

-> citation databases have that option of updating and contextualising text


• Occasionally modern spelling vs. old spelling

• Indexing and abstracting adds layer of interpretation & information

-> citation databases -> keywords and additional information which are not in the text at all


i.e. concepts which are underlying a text, but are not articulated:

e.g. New German School ("Neudeutsche Schule") only introduced in 1859, but a member of this “movement” might have written a text expressing aesthetics before than

Search Strategies – Boolean parameters 1

• AND, OR and NOT create relationships between keywords

• Use several search strategies and databases and compare results

• First use primary search term/keyword

• Then turn 1 concept/keyword into synonyms or related search terms


• So: for gamelan

-> use ‘gamelan’

-> ‘percussion AND Indonesia’

-> ‘percussion AND Bali’

-> ‘instruments AND Indonesia’


• Or: instead of ‘requiem’

-> use ‘death AND music’

-> ‘Mass for the dead’

-> ‘Missa pro defunctis’

-> ‘death AND society’

Important:Be aware of the database you are searching!A general database (e.g Web of Science) will result in a lot of “non-music” references for certain search terms!

Search Strategies – other hints

• Some databases and searches allow use of quotation marks;

e.g. ‘Mass for the dead’ returns different results than

Mass for the dead

• Another way is search as phrase


• However, be aware of narrowing down too much -> fewer hits

• Replace a letter:

e.g. to find either ‘globalisation’ or ‘globalization’ –

use the question mark: ‘globali?ation’


• Replace any number of letters:

e.g. to find ‘pastoral’, ‘pastoralism’, ‘pastoralists’ –

use the asterisk: ‘pastoral*’; e.g. ‘pastoral*’ and ‘Beethoven

Course handouts, slides, etc.

If you log in to

http://training.cam.ac.uk/cul/course/cul-musonline or

http://training.cam.ac.uk/cul/ and find the How to Find Literature about Music session

http://training.cam.ac.uk/cul/course/cul-musonline

http://training.cam.ac.uk/cul/

Course handout

Literature search keyword grid

‘Practicals’

• Explore several search strategies with several databases and online bibliographies.

• If you have any questions or problems please let me know.

• Please check your emails later, and fill out a Surveymonkey survey.

Any questions?

Any questions?

Clemens Gresser

-> cg474

mailto:[email protected]

how to find literature about music cambridge university library clemens gresser deputy head of music...

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