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 or indexes.
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 an icon (a tiny picture) next to the articles; mouse over it to learn if it is from a scholarly journal, a trade journal, or a magazine.
Peer reviewed or refereed journals. 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. For articles in JSTOR, click on the "Publication Info" link next to the journal's title. It may indicate whether that journal is peer reviewed; if not, look for that journal's website on the Internet and try to discover it from there. Most journals in JSTOR are peer reviewed, but not all. In many databases, you can limit your search strategy to have the computer look only for peer reviewed articles, if that is the only type you want to retrieve (although JSTOR can not do that). Alternatively, Ingram Library does subscribe to the database Ulrich's, where you can look up each journal and it will tell you if it is peer reviewed. (They call it refereed there). This icon: 
on Ulrich's indicates whether the journal is refereed.
Citing the sources you use in your research paper is very important. The citation reference styles most commonly used by musicians are APA and Chicago. The Purdue Owl website has a great deal of information on this topic; scroll down to the "Research and Citation" section to find many helpful links for how to cite sources in these styles.
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.
A multidisciplinary scholarly database offering full-text coverage of information in many disciplines. This is an excellent database to begin research and find journal articles and other sources for most topics.
Covers all aspects of education and educational research and provides access to education-related resource such as conference proceedings and selected presentations; Congressional hearings and reports; reports on federal/state standards, testing, and regulations.