Research Guides: Music: 2: Find Sources

Find Sources

Find Journal articles report the results of research by experts. Sometimes they're also called "peer-reviewed articles," "scholarly articles," or "academic articles." They are often used in academic research.

You should use journal articles because they:

Contain evidence based on research
Are written by experts
Focus on a narrow topic
Provide detailed information
Are probably more accurate because of the peer-review process
Lend credibility to your paper

Find journal articles in these databases:

ProQuest Music Periodicals Database This link opens in a new window
This database provides indexing and abstracts for several hundred international music periodicals from over 20 countries, plus full text for more than 140 of the indexed journals. The database currently includes over 1.3 million records, the majority from the most recent ten years of publication. Some complete journal runs are included, with indexing back to 1874. Covers the full spectrum of subjects and all aspects of music, including music education, performance, ethnomusicology, musical theatre, theory, popular music forms and composition.
Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals This link opens in a new window
RIPM Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals is an international, highly annotated database with detailed content analysis of writings on musical history and culture between 1800 and 1950--from Beethoven to Bartok, from Berlioz to Berg, and from Schubert to Shostakovich--all provided by internationally-recognized scholars and editors. RIPM currently indexes the contents of 140 music periodicals including articles, reviews, illustrations, music examples, advertisements, press reviews, and more. In addition, RIPM offers more than 5,000 English-language translations of articles from journals in other languages.
RILM Abstracts of Music Literature This link opens in a new window
RILM Abstracts of Music Literature is a comprehensive bibliography on writings about music featuring citations, abstracts, and indexes. It covers over one million publications from around the world on traditional music, popular music, classical music, and related subjects. Coverage begins in the early 19th century and extends to the present.
RIPM Jazz This link opens in a new window
While much attention over the past forty years has focused on preserving and making accessible periodicals dealing with the European concert music tradition, the treatment of historical jazz journals has, until today, remained conspicuously absent. With the first installment of RIPM Jazz Periodicals, RIPM brings to the fore this remarkable, often neglected documentary resource.

Books on a shelf Some books include research by experts, and you may want to use them in your research project.

You should use books because they:

Give a broad overview of one or more topics
Explain a complex topic (books are easier to understand than journal articles)
Offer in-depth analysis of a topic
Summarize previous research on a topic

Find books in these databases:

UNC Libraries Catalog
Searches books, eBooks, music, videos, and other items at the Michener and Skinner Libraries.
Prospector
Searches books at other libraries in Colorado and Wyoming. Request books from these libraries and have them delivered to the Michener or Skinner Libraries.

WorldCat This link opens in a new window
Search for items in libraries worldwide.

Headphones Music recording databases encompass a wide range of performing arts content and span multiple time periods and genres.

You should use these music recordings because they:

Provide high quality audio experiences
Capture live performances
Enable in-depth analysis of music
Supplement text-based research

Find music recordings in these databases:

Music Online: Listening This link opens in a new window
Music Online: Listening provides access to nearly 1 million tracks of recorded music in all genres. The collections available in this database are American Song, Classical Music Library, Contemporary World Music, Jazz Music Library, and Smithsonian Global Sounds for Libraries.
Naxos Music Library This link opens in a new window
Naxos Music Library [NML] is the world´s largest online classical music library. Over 800 new CDs are added to the library every month.
Naxos Music Library - Jazz This link opens in a new window
Naxos Music Library Jazz [NMLJ] offers a mix selection of jazz legends and contemporary jazz. Recordings of over 32,000 artists are represented. The recordings in Naxos Music Library Jazz come from over 200 labels, and include the catalogue of Blue Note Records, Warner Jazz, EMI, Fantasy and others.
Naxos World This link opens in a new window
Naxos World provides wide range of content, from legendary historical performances to contemporary world music. Recordings of over 32,000 artists are represented. Explore the complete ARC and Smithsonian Folkways catalogues and titles from over 350 other labels. The database contains music from over 150 countries, with more than 1,500 cultural groups represented.
Ethnomusicology: Global Field Recordings This link opens in a new window
Delve into the cultural study of music and explore content from across the globe with this diverse and comprehensive collection. Produced in collaboration with the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive, the material in this collection includes thousands of audio field recordings and interviews, educational recordings, film footage, field notebooks, slides, correspondence and ephemera from over 60 fields of study.

Photographer takes self-portrait Images are the visual depictions of scholarly and creative works. Video represents a wide variety of streaming media sources including documentary films, concerts and recitals, lectures, demonstrations, experiments, animations, interviews, news stories, and feature films.

You should use images because they:

Supplement written explanations
Illustrate artistic or scientific themes or techniques
Explain concepts visually and/or auditorily
Convey conditions
Provide visual accounts of events, demonstrations, or performances

Find images and video in these databases:

Medici.tv This link opens in a new window
A rare and exclusive selection of concerts, ballets, operas, documentaries, master classes, behind-the-scenes footage, and interviews.
Digital Theatre Plus This link opens in a new window
Digital Theatre Plus offers high-quality streaming video of leading British theatre productions, as well as collections from the Royal Opera House, the Broadway Digital Archive, and the National Jewish Theatre.
Theatre in Video This link opens in a new window
Definitive performances of the world's leading plays, together with film documentaries, online in hundreds of hours of streaming video. UNC has access to volumes 1 and 2.
Kanopy This link opens in a new window
A selection of music performances, films, and documentaries across different performing arts disciplines.

Search Effectively

Yellow, blue, and purple keys Unlike Google, library databases can't understand complete sentences. You'll need to break your topic down into the most important concepts, also called keywords, and use those keywords to search library databases.

Example topic: How does social media impact happiness among teenagers?

Keywords: social media, happiness, teenagers

Brainstorm synonyms:

Sometimes experts use different terms than we use in everyday conversation. It's important to think of synonyms and related terms for your keywords so that you can use different combinations of words to get the best results when searching.

Keyword: teenagers

Synonyms: adolescents, youth

Library databases often have built-in search tools. Try them out!

Peer-Reviewed: Limit your search to journal articles.
Discipline: Limit your search to a particular discipline (such as psychology or education).
Publication Date: Limit your search to sources published during certain years.
Subject Terms: These are like library hashtags. Limit your search to sources about that subject.

Quotation marks Experts often cite each other's work, and that can help you find more sources on your topic!

To find older relevant sources:

Find the list of sources at the end of a relevant source you've found. This may be called "bibliography," "works cited," or "references."
Look for titles in the list that relate to your topic.
Copy and paste relevant titles into a library database.

To find newer relevant sources:

When you find a relevant source in a database, look for a link called "Cited by."
Click this link to see more recent sources that may be related to your topic.