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Music: List of Music Databases

This page is a selective guide to assist Music students with locating initial resources

Music Journal Electronic Access

The following databases are electronic access points for Music Journals. 

JSTOR

 is used by millions for research, teaching, and learning. With more than a thousand academic journals and over 1 million images, letters, and other primary sources, it is one of the world's most trusted sources for academic content.

JSTOR features 81 Music Journal titles and provides full-text access to over 52,000 journal articles.

RILM

Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM) is a comprehensive bibliography of writings on music serving the global music research community. Today RILM has over 550,000 records in 214 languages from 151 countries. RILM's International Center is housed at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City.

ProQuest Research Library

is not a database. ProQuest is a vendor or "aggregator."

ProQuest is a company that provides several databases to ISU. ProQuest databases may be accessed and searched simlultaneously or individually through the ProQuest interface. The advantage to this is that you only need to learn one interface to search each databse. a caution, though, is that each database has its own special features unique to itself that may need to be considered when searching.

Music students at ISU are interested in searching the Proquest Research Library database where there are 34 Journal Titles available for research.

Project MUSE

 is a unique collaboration between libraries and publishers, providing 100% full-text, affordable and user-friendly online access to a comprehensive selection of prestigious humanities and social sciences journals. MUSE's online journal collections support a diverse array of research needs at academic, public, special and school libraries worldwide. Our journals are heavily indexed and peer-reviewed, with critically acclaimed articles by the most respected scholars in their fields. MUSE is also the sole source of complete, full-text versions of titles from many of the world's leading university presses and scholarly societies. Currently, MUSE provides full-text access to current content from over 400 titles representing nearly 100 not-for-profit publishers.

 

MUSE has access to 12 Music Journal titles.

Other Resources

The following databases support Music Research but are not specific to Reference Materials or Journals.

Worldcat

 is the world's largest network of library content and services. WorldCat libraries are dedicated to providing access to their resources on the Web, where most people start their search for information. Worldcat lets you search the collections of libraries in your community and thousands more around the world. WorldCat grows every day thanks to the efforts of librarians and other information professionals.  You can search for popular books, music CDs and videos—all of the physical items you're used to getting from libraries. You can also discover many new kinds of digital content, such as downloadable audiobooks. You may also find article citations with links to their full text; authoritative research materials, such as documents and photos of local or historic significance; and digital versions of rare items that aren't available to the public. Because WorldCat libraries serve diverse communities in dozens of countries, resources are available in many languages.  Materials in Worldcat can be requested via Cunningham Memerial Libraries' Illiad  Inter-Library Loan software.   Worldcat is interlinked with Illiad, so users may request an item directly from the Worldcat record.

Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology

  produces Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology. DDM is an international database of bibliographic records for completed dissertations and new dissertation topics in the fields of musicology, music theory, and ethnomusicology, as well as in related musical, scientific, and humanistic disciplines. Currently containing over 14,000 records, including the corrected and updated contents of all earlier printed editions of Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology and supplements contributed from musicological centers throughout the world, the database is fully searchable.

The Music Index

FALL 2014: SUBSCRIPTION TO THIS RESOURCE HAS BEEN CANCELED. Please use RILM and the other sources listed here.

The Music Index Online is the single most comprehensive subject-author guide to music periodical literature with data from more than 850 music periodicals from over 40 countries. The database is an invaluable resource for both the novice scholar and the experienced academician with more than 1.4 million subject and author records and about 100,000 new records being added annually. Coverage forThe Music Index Online spans 1972 to the present, as well as additional backfile data from 1962-1971. Topics concerned with every aspect of the classical and popular world of music are thoroughly categorized and organized. The Music Index Online cites book reviews, obituaries, new periodicals, and news and articles about music, musicians and the music industry.

Music Reference Resources

The following are Music Reference Resources available electronically via Cunningham Library. 

New Grove Online

Grove Music Online has been the leading online resource for music research since its inception in 2001, a glorious compendium of music scholarship offering the full texts of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edition (2001), The New Grove Dictionary of Opera (1992), and The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, 2nd edition (2002), as well as numerous subsequent updates and emendations. Including more than 50,000 signed articles and 30,000 biographies contributed by over 6,000 scholars from around the world, Grove Music Online is the unsurpassed authority on all aspects of music. To supplement Grove Music Online, we now offer the Oxford Dictionary of Music and the Oxford Companion to Music.

Oxford Dictionary of Music

The Oxford Dictionary of Music is an indispensable guide for all music lovers and performers, both amateur and professional, The Oxford Dictionary of Music brings together an unrivalled collection of entries — 12,500 in all — covering musical subjects of all kinds in an authoritative and accessible way. Included in this impressive work are entries on composers, performers, conductors, musical terms and forms, instruments, works, venues, and a host of other topics. This essential work is now available as a part of a subscription to Grove Music Online.

Containing 5,000 entries on composers, most of which include up-to-date worklists, The Oxford Dictionary of Music also provides entries on conductors, performers, directors, critics, producers and designers of international repute, writers and scholars. Entries also cover individual works, including operas and ballets, orchestras and companies from around the world, famous opera houses, concert-halls, and musical festivals. Musical terms and styles, as well as forms ranging from operatic, vocal, and film scores, to song cycles, chamber, hymns, barbershop, and oratorios are covered, as are general themes such as musicology, acoustics, and absolute pitch, and historical periods such as the Byzantine era. Entries also include a wide range of musical instruments, from the familiar—strings, wind, and brass — to the less familiar — aeolian harp, bamboula and sackbut.

Oxford Companion to Music

The Oxford Companion to Music has been the first choice for authoritative information on all aspects of music for generations of researchers. This acclaimed work is now available online as part of a subscription to Grove Music Online.

Completely revised and updated in 2002 by a distinguished team of contributors, the Companion features more than 1,000 new entries than the previous edition; more than 70 percent of the entire text is either new or entirely rewritten. In articles that range from clear, concise definitions of musical ideas and terms to extended surveys of musical forms and styles, is authoritative coverage of virtually every musical subject. Embracing the world of music in all its variety — including jazz, popular music, and dance — the Companion offers a concentrated focus on the Western classic tradition, from the Middle Ages to the present day.

More than 8,000 articles sweep across an extraordinary range of subjects: composers, performers, conductors, individual works, instruments and notation, forms and genres. From the study of music — theory, aesthetics, scholarship — to the way it is performed and disseminated, the Companion provides comprehensive, accessible coverage of music in all its artistic, historical, cultural, and social dimensions.

Garland Encyclopedia of World Music

The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Online is the first comprehensive online resource devoted to music research of all the world's peoples. More than 9,000 pages of material, combined with entries by more than 700 expert contributors from all over the world, make this the most complete body of work focused on world music. This release includes 1,210 essays and images from 10 sources and hundreds of audio examples.

Biography in Context

 delivers outstanding research support with nearly a million biographical entries spanning history and geography. Just like all the new revolutionary In Context products, it’s a curriculum-aligned resource that offers media-rich content in context that's updated daily to meet the needs of today’s user. In it you’ll find:

  • 600,000+ biographies covering more than 525,000 individuals
  • 170+ award-winning Gale reference titles
  • 50,000 new or updated bios added annually in addition to daily updates to account for awards and events
  • Integrated reference material, periodical information and multimedia content
  • Hundreds of hand-crafted topic pages covering the highest-interest features