The online resources included here are databases, certain journals, companions, and encyclopedias. These are widely used by all music scholars, and thus facilitate conversations with sister disciplines like historical musicology and music theory. These resources are vast, but might be of particular interest to students needing to get acquainted with the primary notions of music analysis and world music repertory. If you need ideas about what search terms are most effective please see "Search Advice" under the Home tab of this libguide.
As a Haskell student, you should have access through these resources via your home institution's library or via the partnership with the University of Kansas. Just click on the links below to be redirected to the main pages for these resources or search them in your Haskell library account using their names.
Oxford Music Online. 2009-present. Oxford University Press.
The Oxford Music Online is a paramount portal for all music scholars. This source encompasses the Grove Music Online - the most respectable encyclopedia of music-, the Oxford Dictionary of Music, and the Oxford Companion to Music – a reference book. The dictionary and the companion are also sold separately in physical form, but grove's more than 52,000 entries are updated constantly by more than 9,000 scholars around the world. Each one of these articles also includes a bibliography, which more likely be helpful for students to continue their search.
JSTOR Music Resources. 1995-present. Ithaca Harbors.
Using JSTOR, students will be able to consult a wide range of music resources all compiled in one place. JSTOR grants access to 76 music journals, some of which started to be printed in 1869. Key titles for ethnomusicology students are African Music, American Music, Asian Music, Black Music Research Journal, The Black Perspective in Music, Cahiers d’ethnomusicologie, Ethnomusicology, Ethnomusicology Forum, Folk Music Journal, Jazz and Culture, the Latin American Music Review, Popular Music, Studies in Popular Culture, the World Music, and the Yearbook for Traditional Music. Additionally, JSTOR has an even more impressive amount of books, amounting to 1,475 titles. The best way to find relevant items is going to the home page, then subjects, then music and use the search tab for music materials only.
Music Periodicals Database. 2007-present. ProQuest.
This database includes scholarly and non-scholarly sources in the form of peer- review journals and music periodicals. For this reason, it is a valuable source to compare and reconcile the voices of music critics and academics. Here, you will find abstracts, index, and full text for 600 music periodicals, and 220 journals. The coverage dates back to 1874, and is constantly updated.
RILM. Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale.
1994-present. OCLC First Search.
The Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale’s main mission is to decentralize the loci of information and documentation about music, in order to make resources truly accessible to a global audience. This entails not only the dissemination of information but also the inclusion of knowledge on non-Western topics and written by non-Western authors. Accordingly, RILM works in partnership with the International Council for Traditional Music, the International Musicological Society, and the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Center. The three most useful resources that RILM offers students are the RILM abstracts of music literature with full text, the RILM music encyclopedias, and the index to print music. For example, the RILM abstracts of music literature with full text includes 238 music and non-musical journals from 50 countries in 40 languages.
Music Online :The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music.
Alexander Street – ProQuest.
An invaluable source of information in ethnomusicology, the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music is composed of ten volumes. Nine of them focuses on a specific geographical region of the world, and the last one is called “general perspectives and reference tools.” The texts’ discussions are nicely accompanied and exemplified by a corresponding CD. The Garland encyclopedia is a great resource for ethnomusicology courses because fragments can be easily extracted from each volume in a coherent manner. Additionally, the volumes feature a balance between comprehensiveness and depth that make it amenable to the classroom.
The Musical Quarterly. 1915-present. Oxford University Press.
One of the most renowned music journals internationally, but of particular importance to music scholars in the United States, The Musical Quarterly has had a diverse scope since its foundation 1915. While primarily an excellent source for the study of Western art music, this journal features several categories of interest for ethnomusicologists. We can name “American Musics,” “Music and Culture,” “The Twentieth Century and Beyond,” “Institutions, Industries, and Technologies,” and “Primary Sources” among them. The Music Quarterly also publishes reviews of books and recordings. Relevant searches of this source start in the late 50’s period and include American traditional and popular music in particular.
Cambridge Companions to Music. Cambridge University Press.
This series of books are commissioned by Cambridge Press in order to provide an accessible and authoritative guide to virtually all topics related to music. The primary audience of this series are students, performers, and music lovers. Therefore, the content is oriented towards practicality and assume no previous knowledge from the reader, making them ideal for an introductory course. At the moment there are 73 companions. Among the most relevant ones for ethnomusicology we have Cambridge Companions to Jewish music, hip-hop, the Beatles, recorded music, electronic music, the musical, jazz, and pop and rock.