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Music

Resources and research information for music students and faculty.

Introduction

Articles in periodicals (scholarly journals, trade journals, newspapers, and popular magazines) will be part of your research.  Periodicals are published more frequently than books, so they are essential when looking for information on current topics.  Although articles in scholarly journals can be quite lengthy, articles are generally shorter than books, which means articles may cover very focused aspects of a topic.

If you are looking for an article on a topic, use the databases.

If you are looking for a particular article and you know the name of the periodical in which the article can be found, use the "Journals" tab on the library's homepage.

Any article not available through the services above can be requested via Resource Sharing.

See the Websites tab in this guide for information about open access journals.

Scholarly v. popular resources.  Do you need help understanding the difference between scholarly and popular resources?  The University of Arkansas has a great webpage that explains the differences; click here to view it.  ProQuest puts a tiny picture next to the articles with the resource type listed below, like Scholarly Journal, Trade Journal, or Newspaper, to name a few. 

Peer reviewed or refereed journals.  You can filter search results within most databases to show peer reviewed articles only.  If you're using an EBSCO database and want to know if an article you find is peer reviewed, click on the title of the journal and look at the last line of information.  It will say "Peer reviewed: Yes" if that journal is peer reviewed.  Another way to determine if an article is peer reviewed is to look for that journal's website on the Internet and try to discover it from there.  

Citing the sources you use in your research paper is very important.  The citation reference styles most commonly used by musicians are Chicago and APA.  The Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University and the Brief Guide to APA, MLA and Turabian from University of North Florida are good sources for help in reference style citations.  Style manuals are also available through the Catalog.  If you have questions about how to do a particular citation after trying your best, please ask your professor or contact the University Writing Center.

Databases

For most lower level, non-professional research, a general database such as Academic Search Complete will cover most of what you need, including the basics of a topic and the latest developments.  When doing more scholarly, higher level research, you will want to use our subject specific database in music, which is Oxford Music Online.  Education databases may also be relevant to your research.  A few of them are listed below; see more in the Education section of Databases & GALILEO.

To access databases from off campus, you will need to log on with your UWG username and password.  

Music Database

Education Databases

Other Online Databases