Weird Music

Professor McIntyre
September 15, 2005

 

Using Reference Books to help you with background information

Reference books, located in the reference area of the first floor, provide you with background information that can be helpful in developing a topic or thesis statement. You’ll find information about people, dates, events, statistics, places, definitions, terms, and concepts—in all subject areas. You may find these through our catalog, or better yet, ask a reference librarian to help you identify useful reference works in the subject area with which you are working. A major reference work for the filed of music is The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. It is located in the reference section: Ref. ML100 .N48 2001.
Using the Library Catalog to find material within the building and available electronically.

Guide to using the Library catalog

http://www.lib.grinnell.edu/research/InstructionGuides/opac.html

What you need to know:

What you kind of materials you can find in the catalog

Almost anything: music (scores and recordings), films, printed material, electronic material including web pages and databases. You can find almost anything except journal articles.

How to find material that you identify in the catalog

Check status (checked out or not?)
Check location (floor, special area within the library?)
Write down the entire call number
Ask for assistance if you are coming up short

Constructing a search in the catalog

If you are looking for a known item you can do either an author or a title search. For instance, you are looking for Claude V. Palisca’s Humanism in Italian Renaissance Musical Thought. You can search using the title or using the author. If you search by author you must type the author’s name in last name, first name order. These are “exact searches.” The computer wants the words in the right order. If you are looking for words on a particular topic you will do either a keyword or a subject search. Subject searches are also exact searches (see examples below). A keyword search can be any combination of words of your choosing. You may need to know how to do a Boolean search.

See the guide for constructing a Boolean search. You also have a hand out on this
http://www.lib.grin.edu/research/InstructionGuides/booleanmodule.html

An example of a simple keyword search: Gesualdo and madrigal

You can then limit your search to material type (printed music, recorded music, “language material” (means book).

Library of Congress Subject Headings include:

Gesualdo, Carlo, principe di Venosa, 1560 (ca.)-1613
Madrigals -- History and criticism
Part-songs, Italian -- To 1800
Music -- Italy -- History and criticism
Composers – Italy
Music -- Italy -- 16th century -- History and criticism
Renaissance -- Italy
Humanism

See the guide for working with keywords and subject headings:
http://www.lib.grin.edu/research/InstructionGuides/subjectkeywords.html

Online Databases for finding articles in journals and, in some cases, chapters in books

You can get to these and other databses by doing a title search in the online catalog or by going to the alphabetical list of databases:

RILM (Research in the Literature of Music)—This would be the most specialized database—focusing specifically on the study of music

Historical Abstracts—the main focus of this database is history as the name suggests. But you will find articles related to literature, music, and other topics because of their historical nature.

Academic Search Premier—this is a general database. It covers subjects to a greater or lesser extent in all disciplines.

JSTOR—This is a collection of journals in a wide variety of disciplines including music. Journal articles are available in full text through this database. If you conduct a search in JSTOR you can search all of the words in all of the articles.

Humanities Abstracts—This is a carefully focused database covering journals in the humanities including music and history.

As in using the online catalog, you will want to take advantage of both keyword search and subject headings. Most databases have subject headings—and call them descriptors. JSTOR does not have subject headings.

Refworks

Refworks is a database that helps you to organize your bibliographic citations. If you are interested in learning how to set up an account and make use of this database, please consider stopping by the reference desk or setting up an appointment.

Prepared by Rebecca Stuhr, Grinnell College Libraries. September 2005

stuhrr/x3674.