The document provides guidance on building a bibliography for music research. It outlines the formats, content, and tools used for bibliographic research. Key steps include selecting citations from articles, locating selected items using the Cornell catalog or articles tab, and searching indexes like RILM and Music Index to find additional relevant articles. The goal is to follow citations and search tools to fully explore and master the bibliographic universe for a music research topic.
3. The formats you’ll find
books
book chapters
journal articles
dissertations
conference papers
4. The content you’ll read
elements of the music
social context of the
music
historical perspectives
on the music
5. The tools you’ll use
Cornell’s
Grove or Periodical
catalog and
Garland indexes
articles tab
Grove Music Online or
Garland Encyclopedia
of World Music
6. Cornell’s
Grove or Periodical
catalog and
Garland indexes
articles tab
• Select citations from the
bibliography of the article about
the genre, composer, etc.
7. Cornell’s
Grove or Periodical
catalog and
Garland indexes
articles tab
• Locate the selected items
(catalog for books, articles tab for e-articles)
• Search for additional items (subject
headings, etc.)
8. Cornell’s
Grove or Periodical
catalog and
Garland indexes
articles tab
• Search for additional articles etc.
Search for additional
in RILM, Music Index, etc.
articles etc. in:
9. Summary: discovering writings
Grove or Cornell’s catalog Periodical
Garland and articles tab indexes
• Select • Locate the • Search for
citations selected additional
from the items articles etc.
bibliography (catalog for in:
of the article books, • RILM
about the articles tab • Music
genre, for e-articles) Index
composer, • Search for
etc. additional
items
(subject
headings,
etc.)
You won’t just be reading books. Your task is to digest several pieces of scholarly literature in various formats and demonstrate your command of the literature in your paper. It all begins with compiling a bibliography of writings, which is its own distinct process. You can learn a lot just from gathering sources to read.
You’ll find writings in some of these formats. Journal articles are a hugely important component of the scholarly literature. Why you want articles—explore a narrow topic in good detail.
The writings will shed light on the music in different ways. They may discuss the music and text, provide social commentary relevant to the time and place, or summarize historical perspectives on the music.
But rather than search one format at a time or one content type at a time, you are going to search everything at once in a three-part journey, that begins with Grove Music Online (or some other reference source), proceeds to Cornell’s catalog, and then to periodical indexes. I’ll explain what all of these things are.
Phase one. Who has used Grove? It’s a good starting point for music research.
Now that we have a few citations and we’ve located some chosen items, we’re ready for phase two, where we expand our search and look for additional items. We’ll do that in the catalog.
And here we are at the last leg of this journey.
It’s an iterative process. You might think of it as…And if you do that,…
