Music in General Databases—
Overview and Searching Tips
for Finding Important Musical Content
in Non-Music Electronic Resources
Presented by
Darwin F. Scott
Creative Arts Librarian
Brandeis University
Music Library Association
The Society for American Music
Joint Conference
Pittsburgh, PA
March 1, 2007
http://people.brandeis.edu/~dscott/mla/pitt-e-resources.htm
NON-MUSIC ELECTRONIC RESOURCES
WITH IMPORTANT MUSICAL CONTENT—
TOPICAL LIST CRITERIA
• All resources tested for music content February 27, 2007.
• Extent of music coverage varies from resource to resource and is
generally highly selective.
• When searched with focused expectations, these resources can
produce useful citations and data not found in the standard
music resources.
• Omits aggregators (Academic Search Premier, etc.) and obvious
general resources (Dissertation Abstracts, Encyclopædia
Britannica Online, Web of Science, etc.).
• List based on resources accessible from Brandeis University.
• This is a subjective list—not intended to be comprehensive.
NON-MUSIC ELECTRONIC RESOURCES
WITH SIGNIFICANT MUSIC CONTENT—TOPICAL LIST
African American Music
•
Oxford African American Studies Center
Central portal for several key reference sources on African Americans published by
the Oxford University Press.
American Music
•
America: History and Life (ABC-Clio)
Indexes journals, books, and dissertations on U.S. and Canadian history and
culture, 1964 to present.
•
American National Biography (Oxford University Press)
Over 18,300 biographies, including the 17,435 original biographies from the 1999
print edition. New biographies added and others revised three time per year—
including articles on recently deceased notables as well as figures from the past
who were not subjects in the print edition.
•
America’s Historical Newspapers (Readex Archive of Americana)
Searches or browses early American newspapers including titles from all 50 present
states. Includes: Early American Newspapers, Series I (1690–1876), Early American
Newspapers, Series II (1758–1900), and Early American Newspapers, Series III
(1829–1922).
•
Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639–1800 (Readex Archive of
America)
Searches or browses the books, pamphlets, broadsides, and other imprints listed in
the bibliography by Charles Evans.
NON-MUSIC ELECTRONIC RESOURCES
WITH SIGNIFICANT MUSIC CONTENT—TOPICAL LIST
•
Early American Imprints, Series II: Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801–1819 (Readex
Archive of America)
Search or browse the books, pamphlets, broadsides and other imprints listed in the
distinguished bibliography by Ralph R. Shaw and Richard H. Shoemaker.
Arabic / Islamic Music
•
Index Islamicus (CSA)
Bibliography of almost 100 years of publications in European languages on all
aspects of Islam and the Muslim world, including history, cultures, societies,
languages, and literatures.
Asian Music
•
Bibliography of Asian Studies
Indexes western-language monographs, articles, and book chapters on the social
sciences and humanities pertaining to all parts of Asia, 1971 to present.
British Composers and Musicians
•
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online (ODNBO)
Full text of the 60-volume Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Contains
illustrated biographies of people who were born or have lived in the United Kingdom
and who have made a lasting impression or significant contribution to the history of
the British Isles. Three updates per year.
NON-MUSIC ELECTRONIC RESOURCES
WITH IMPORTANT MUSICAL CONTENT—TOPICAL LIST
Eastern European Music
•
American Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies Online
(EBSCOhost)
Indexes articles, books, book reviews, dissertations, and selected government
publications on East-Central Europe and the former Soviet Union published in the
United States and Canada, 1990-present.
Early European Printed Music and Librettos
•
Early English Books Online (EEBO) (Chadwyck-Healey)
Digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland,
Scotland, Wales and British North America from 1473 to 1700.
•
Eighteenth-Century Collection Online (ECCO) (Thomson Gale)
The digital edition of "The Eighteenth Century" microfilm collection, offering full-text
searching and access to nearly 150,000 English-language titles and editions
published between 1701 and 1800.
Ethnomusicology / World Music
•
Anthropology Plus (Eureka—moving soon to OCLC FirstSearch)
Indexes articles on all anthropological topics. Combines Anthropological Literature
from Harvard University and Anthropological Index, Royal Anthropological Institute
from the UK, 19th century to present.
NON-MUSIC ELECTRONIC RESOURCES
WITH IMPORTANT MUSICAL CONTENT—TOPICAL LIST
European Music
•
Historical Abstracts (ABC-Clio)
Indexes journals, books, and dissertations on European and world history,
excluding the United States and Canada, 1955 to present.
Greek and Roman Music
•
L’année philologique
Indexes publications covering all aspects of Greco-Roman antiquity.
Gay and Lesbian Music
•
LGBT Life with Full Text (EBSCOhost)
Indexes literature regarding lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues.
Jewish Music
•
Encyclopaedia Judaica (Gale Virtual Reference Library)
Full text of the 2007 2nd edition—but coverage of major musical figures is very
disappointing (too brief and biographies very out of date)
•
Index to Jewish Periodicals (EBSCOhost)
Indexes English-language articles on Jewish history, activity and thought, 1988 to
present.
NON-MUSIC ELECTRONIC RESOURCES
WITH IMPORTANT MUSICAL CONTENT—TOPICAL LIST
Latin American Music
•
Handbook of Latin American Studies Online
Selective annotated bibliography of scholarly works on Latin America in the
humanities and social sciences from the Library of Congress. Includes books,
journal articles, book chapters, conference papers, and electronic resources. 1935present, including contents of future print volumes.
•
Hispanic American Periodicals Index (HAPI)
Indexes articles on Central and South America, Mexico, the Caribbean and Latinos
in the United States, 1970 to present.
Music Aesthetics and Philosophy
•
Philosopher’s Index
Indexes journals and some books in English, French, Spanish, German and Italian
covering scholarly research in fifteen fields of philosophy, 1940 to present.
•
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
A dynamic reference work with refereed entries written by volunteers, covering
important topics, history, and major figures in the field of philosophy.
NON-MUSIC ELECTRONIC RESOURCES
WITH IMPORTANT MUSICAL CONTENT—TOPICAL LIST
Music and Society /Sociology of Music
•
Social Sciences Abstracts (FirstSearch)
Indexes and abstracts articles in over 550 international, English-language social
science journals, 1983 to present.
•
SocINDEX with Full Text (EBSCOhost)
Indexes and abstracts journal articles in sociology, with full text for a select number
of titles, 1895 to present (basically Sociological Abstracts with full text)
Music and Text
•
MLA Bibliography
Indexes journals, monographs, working papers and proceedings in literature,
language, linguistics, and folklore, 1963 to present.
Music Cognition
•
CogNet
Provides an electronic community for the cognitive and brain sciences developed
by MIT, including a searchable full-text library, a calendar of events, job listings,
discussion groups, and more.
NON-MUSIC ELECTRONIC RESOURCES
WITH IMPORTANT MUSICAL CONTENT—TOPICAL LIST
Music in Newspapers (Reviews, Feature Articles, etc.)
•
LexisNexis Academic
Provides full-text news from major and regional newspapers.
•
New York Times Historical Archive
Includes full-text and full-image issues of the New York Daily Times, 1851-1857
and the New York Times, 1857-2003.
The most comprehensive example of the major newspaper archives produced by
ProQuest. (Others include the Washington Post,
Music in Special Collections
•
ArchiveGrid
Indexes and provides access to over 700,000 collection records and nearly 30,000
collection finding guides for archival resources.
•
National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC)
Indexes close to 500,000 records of archival and manuscript collections in
research libraries, museums, state archives, and historical societies throughout
North America.
NON-MUSIC ELECTRONIC RESOURCES
WITH IMPORTANT MUSICAL CONTENT—TOPICAL LIST
Music Librarianship
•
Library Literature and Information Science
Indexes materials on libraries and librarianship, 1984 to present.
•
Library, Information Science, and Technology Abstracts
Includes librarianship, classification, cataloging, bibliometrics, online information
retrieval, information management and more. Mid-1960s to present.
Music in 19th-Century Periodicals / 19th-Century Music
•
Nineteenth Century Masterfile
Indexes periodicals, books, newspapers, government documents, scientific papers,
and portraits produced during the nineteenth century.
Music Psychology
•
PsycARTICLES
Full-text articles from 49 journals published by the American Psychological
Association and allied organizations from 1987 to the present. Journals included in
this database are indexed in PsychoINFO.
•
PsycINFO
Indexes journal literature, books, dissertations and reports in psychology, 1887 to
present.
NON-MUSIC ELECTRONIC RESOURCES
WITH IMPORTANT MUSICAL CONTENT—TOPICAL LIST
Research Funding and Grants
•
COS Funding Opportunities
Indexes international funding information for every area of research and scholarly
activity, includes daily updates from governmental sources, foundations,
professional societies, associations and corporations.
Women and Music
•
Contemporary Women’s Issues
Indexes and provides full text to 600 journals, newsletters and reports relating to
women's studies, 1992 to present.
•
Women’s Studies International
Indexes journal literature, books, and mixed media from ten women's studies
databases, 1972 to present.
SAMPLE RESOURCES
• LexisNexis Academic—News
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
• American National Biography
• America: History and Life / Historical
Abstracts
• Sociological Abstracts
LexisNexis Academic—News
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Among its many features, offers full-text of 350+ newspapers and 300+
magazines and journals from the U.S. and around the world—many the
same day of publication as the initiated search.
•
Includes extensive archives—for example:
– Boston Globe, 1994–
– New York Times, 1980–
– Washington Post, 1970–
– Billboard, 1991–
– Variety, 1993–
•
Extremely useful for:
– locating performance reviews
– information on contemporary composers
– feature articles on performers
– popular culture and music / popular music
– world music
LexisNexis Academic: News — Homepage
LexisNexis Academic: News — My “Formula” for Searching Concert Reviews,
Music and Popular Culture, World Music, etc.
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4
Step 5
How To Fill In The Boxes
Step One — News category: Arts & Sports News (but for Obituaries, use General News)
Step Two — Select a news source: Entertainment news or Book, movie, music, & play reviews
Step Three — Enter search terms: select Full Text (rather than Headline, Lead Paragraph, etc.)
•
Use and between search words, such as music and globalization or klezmer and jazz or metropolitan and
parsifal.
•
Put quotes around expressions, such as "popular music" or "united states" — combine these as "popular
music" and "united states".
•
Wild cards: * for each letter; ? for indeterminate number of letters.
Step Four — Select the appropriate date range (the default “Previous six months” is usually too narrow)
Step Five (optional) — Limit the publication (New York Times, Boston Globe, etc.) — enter automatically from
Source List link next to Step Two box. Select as many sources as you wish.
LexisNexis Academic: News — Search on Peru Negro, Sorted by Date
Date Sort:
Concert listings and brief
mentions interfile with more
substantive articles and
reviews.
LexisNexis Academic: News — Search on Peru Negro, Sorted by Relevance
Relevance Sort:
More substantive articles
tend to fall early in the list.
LexisNexis Academic: News —Peru Negro Article in the Miami New Times
Search within text
E-mail option
LexisNexis Academic: News — Joyce Hatto Search (General News in Major Papers)
LexisNexis Academic: News — Joyce Hatto Search (General News in Major Papers)
Sic transit gloria
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: Home Page
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: Britten Article—Opening
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (LZW) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: Britten Article—Ending
(Sources, Archives, Likenesses, Wealth at Death)
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:
DNB Archive Link—1986 DNB Article by Donald Mitchell
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:
Britten Article—National Register of Archives Link
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:
Britten Article—National Portrait Gallery Link
National Portrait Gallery: Pears and Britten Portrait
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:
Britten Article—Royal Historical Society Bibliography Link
Royal Historical Society Bibliography:
Link to Britten Article by Sophie Aymès
Following the Link to the Article by Sophie Aymès
in La revue LISA, 4:2 (2006)
Following the Link to the Article by Sophie Aymès in La revue LISA, 4:2
(2006)—Illustrations at End of Article
American National Biography — Advanced Search
American National Biography: Music — Occupations and Realms of Renown
Performing Arts
Performing Arts
American National Biography—Andrews Sisters
American National Biography—Andrews Sisters
American National Biography—Andrews Sisters, continued
America: History and Life and Historical Abstracts
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ABC-Clio products.
Now can be searched separately or jointly.
America: History and Life provides bibliographic references with
abstracts to the history of the United States and Canada from
prehistory to the present.
Historical Abstracts covers the “rest of the world” from 1450 to the
present—but completeness of world coverage depends upon the
journals indexed.
Both cite articles dating back to 1954.
Reasonably up to date—results of 2/27/07 search (very recent citations
can lack abstracts)
– AHL: 8 citations from 2007 journals, 1,980 from 2006 journals
– HA: 2 citations from 2007 journals, 3,567 from 2006 journals
•
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Each product covers 2,000+ journals published worldwide.
In addition to covering all key English-language historical journals,
both products include selected historical journals from major
countries, state and local history journals, and a targeted selection of
hundreds of journals in the social sciences and humanities of special
interest to researchers and students of history.
Includes citations for dissertations and book and media reviews.
America: History and Life and Historical Abstracts
Searching Tips
• Use quotation marks around phrases.
• Boolean AND is default between search words.
• Truncation: * = multiple letters; ? = single letter.
Note: Exactly the opposite of LexisNexis!! Lesson here:
always check the truncation symbols for each product;
there is little consistency across databases.
• Time period: Entries are indexed by decades and centuries
only.
America: History and Life — Homepage
Historical Abstracts — Homepage
Historical Abstracts and America: History & Life
Combined Search Homepage
America: History and Life — Mozart [and] Franklin Search
Brandeis SFX link
For comparison,
latest hits on
Mozart and Franklin
in RILM are two
dissertations, 1999
(in German) and
1996 (in English).
America: History and Life — Mozart [and] Franklin Search
Following the SFX Link to PsycARTICLES
Clicking leads to:
s
America: History and Life — Mozart [and] Franklin Search
Full Text of Article via PsycARTICLES (EBSCOhost)
America: History and Life — Hip-Hop / Rap Music Search
Keyword Search:
(hip-hop or hiphop or “rap music”)
and music
Eliminated books from
search.
America: History and Life — Hip-Hop / Rap Music Search
Unexpanded Records
America: History and Life — Hip-Hop / Rap Music Search Results —
First 8 of 54, with Sample Subjects from Full Records (Old Interface)
Subject: Rap music.
Popular Culture.
Political Commentary.
Music.
Internationalism.
Hip-hop.
Subject: California (Los Angeles).
Music.
Ethnic identity.
Akwid (musical group).
Mexican Americans.
Subject: Rap music.
Music.
Social networks.
Subject: Psychoanalysis.
Death and Dying.
Music.
Rap music.
Real (term).
Hip-hop.
Shakur, Tupac.
Subject: Religion.
Rap music.
Music.
Blacks.
Black Nationalism.
Social Science Abstracts, Sociological Abstracts,
and SocINDEX with Full Text
Can Be Rich Resources
for Interdisciplinary Musical Topics
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Popular culture
Popular music and society
Mass media
Ethnic issues
Women and music
Entertainment industry
Sociological Abstracts — Homepage
Default is Relevance — you may want
to change to Date (descending order)
Sociological Abstracts — Rap Music Search
Sociological Abstracts — Rap Music Search
Sociological Abstracts — Rap Music Search — Sample Record
Slides Available Online
at
http://people.brandeis.edu/~dscott/mla/pitt-e-resources.htm
http://people.brandeis.edu/
~dscott/mla/pitt-e-resources.htm
or request from
dscott@brandeis.edu