Guides: Music literature full-text and bibliographic databases: Music literature full-text and bibliographic databases

Welcome! Use this guide to find literature about music for your research projects and assignments: full-text journal articles, article abstracts, e-books, digital collections, and more

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Core databases for finding music literature, including journal articles

RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text
- Comprehensive scholarly bibliography of writings on music, international in scope, from 1900 to the present
- Covers a wide range of publications: journal articles, conference proceedings, books, dissertations, and essay collections
- Includes full-text content from many leading journals, magazines, and newsletters
Music Periodicals Database (formerly IIMP - International Index to Music Periodicals)
- Guide to scholarly and popular music journals for a wide range of subjects
- Emphasis on articles from 1996 to the present; indexing for certain journals from 1874
- Includes full-text content for many journals
RIPM Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals with Full Text (1760-1966)
- Online access to extensive collections of rare, primary source music periodicals from 1760 to 1966
- Includes specialized music journals selected from more than 20 countries worldwide
- Citations and full text available
- Provides an almost daily chronicle of musical activities over a period of 200 years
RIPM Jazz Periodicals
- Online access to over 100 American jazz periodicals published over the last century
- Coverage includes general, discographical, critical research, and entertainment industry journals
- Advanced search allows for limiting the results to images and discographical entries
- Journal browse feature available
Music Index
- Guide to music periodicals and literature
- Coverage includes articles about music, musicians, instruments, and the music industry (popular and classical)
- Good for finding reviews of books, recordings, and performances; news articles; and obituaries
- Some digital content (1970 to present)
JSTOR: Advanced Search (or Basic Search)
- Provides full-text access to more than 12 million academic journal articles, books, and primary sources in 75 disciplines (including music)
- Advanced search function allows users to filter by item type, language, publication date, journal or publication title, and discipline

General, interdisciplinary, and specialty databases for finding music literature

AES: Audio Engineering Society
- Professional society devoted to audio technology, uniting audio engineers, creative artists, scientists, and students worldwide by promoting advances in audio and disseminating new knowledge and research
- AES E-Library provides access to almost every AES paper published at a convention, conference or in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society from 1953 to the present
Albert Schatz Collection of Opera Libretti (Library of Congress)
- First and early editions of Italian, French, and German opera libretti from the 17th and 18th centuries
- Collection contains more than 12,000 fully catalogued and digitized libretti
- Object viewer allows users to zoom and download
Bibliographie des Musikschrifttums Online
- An international and interactive bibliography of music literature
- Includes monographs, articles and reviews from journals, Festschriften, conference proceedings, yearbooks, anthologies and essays from critical reports
- Search interface available in German and English
Canadian Encyclopedia
- Bilingual digital encyclopedia of history, culture, and people in Canada
- Includes former Encyclopedia of Music in Canada entries
- Almost 20,000 articles written by expert contributors
- Interactive features include curated content exhibits, interactive timelines, immediate updates of important events, and a user-generated content map that invites Canadians to share their stories
- Offers a new learning centre for teachers and parents that contains classroom resources, quizzes, and themed study guides
Canadian Music Periodical Index
- Find citations to articles from hundreds of Canadian music journals, newsletters, and magazines
- Discover articles on musical activity in Canada, from the late-19th century to 2010
Concert Programmes
- Search this database to find locations and descriptions of concert program collections held in European libraries, archives, and museums
- Website provides links to other groups working in this area of documentation, and to a selection of online related projects
Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive
- Archival research resource for studying history of the film and entertainment industries
- Coverage: 1880-2000
Europeana
- Provides access to millions of digitized books, music, and artworks from thousands of European archives, libraries, and museums
- Explore recordings, sheet music, instruments, and music-related collections
- Includes digital exhibitions, galleries, and blogs about music, instruments, and composers
France: Musiques, Cultures, 1789-1918
- A network of over 250 academics and librarians with interests in the music of the French long nineteenth century, linked by a JISC discussion group
- Repository includes more than 3000 digitized, searchable texts relating to French music and ballet in the nineteenth century
- Also provides access to bibliographical resources and work in progress
Gallica, la bibliothèque numérique de la Bibliothèque nationale de France
- Excellent resource for historical and archival research
- Provides access to public-domain digital documents held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF)
- Wide variety of formats included: books, newspapers, periodicals, scores, sound recordings, images, and more
Google Scholar
- Provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature
- Search across many disciplines and sources, including journal articles, academic theses, books, and abstracts
- Configure Google Scholar to access articles available through the Library
Hathi Trust
- A not-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries preserving 17+ million digitized items
- Offers reading access to the fullest extent allowable by U.S. copyright law, computational access to the entire corpus for scholarly research, and other emerging services based on the combined collection
- Search the collection in several ways: catalogue record and full-text across the collection or within a single item
Internet Archive
- Digital collection of public domain materials, including archives and published media from university collections around the world
- Includes sound recordings, scores, books, and other materials
- Public domain materials can be downloaded
- Offers full-text searching within documents and across the collection
Music Online: Music Periodicals of the 19th Century (Alexander Street Press)
- Collection of full-text periodicals depicting American musical life from 1838 to the early 1900s
- Contains local and international news, reviews, editorials, sheet music, and advertisements
Opening Night! Opera & Oratorio Premieres
- Cross-index of data for more than 43,000 opera and oratorio premieres that received a public performance between the years 1589 and the present
- Historical notes provide detailed descriptions for each category, including content parameters and exceptions, and notes on forms of personal and geographical name entries
- Search by title, composer, librettist, or keyword
Oxford Bibliographies: Music
- Book-length bibliographies provide an authoritative guide to current scholarship, containing original commentary and annotations
- Interface guides users directly to relevant information; provides personalized citation lists and links to full-text print and online content
- Bibliographies are written and reviewed by academic experts
Oxford Handbooks Online: Music
- Handbooks offer thorough introductions to topics and a critical survey of the current state of scholarship
- Covers a wide range of music research including historical musicology, ethnomusicology, theory, pedagogy, dance, and technology
- Video tutorial demonstrates the resource's key features and provides search tips: https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/page/take-a-tour
RIdIM (Répertoire International d’Iconographie Musicale)
- An international index of visual sources of music, dance, theatre, and opera
- Wide scope of visual documents and artifacts, including architecture, performance art, videos as well as paintings, drawings, and sculptures
- RIdIM database contains descriptions and images of visual objects; search for images using controlled vocabulary terms or keywords (e.g., names of artists and musicians, musical instruments, titles, art media, date of creation, and owning institutions)
- Images are often included unless protected by copyright
Rock's Backpages Library
- Comprehensive online database of pop music writing; comprises a wide collection of more than 40,000 primary-source full-text articles from the music and mainstream press from the 1950s to the present as well as hundreds of audio interviews
- Archive covers all types of popular music from the 1950s to the present
- Articles are full text and fully searchable (by artist, date, genre, keyword, etc.)
- Sources include American and British publications

Musicology and librarianship reference tools

Digital Resources for Musicology (DRM)
- Created by the Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities, at Stanford University.
- Links to open access repositories, including digitized music manuscripts, digital score reprints, genre based projects, and more
MusRef: Music and dance bibliography and reference (BYU)
- Access an online bibliography of music and dance bibliographies and reference sources (both print and online)
- Provides helpful guides on how to find appropriate research materials using reference sources: Basic introductions to reference tools
- Contains a series of in-depth compilations of research, ranging from an exploration of a composer's life and works to narrowly defined pedagogical topics and specialized historical perspectives on music
- The blog regularly reviews freely accessible music and dance reference sources
Musicologie.org : Références en musicologie
- Publishes articles about music topics, including philosophy, history, and theory, as well as biographies, encyclopedic articles, and reviews of concerts and recordings
- Provides access to practical resources and announcements about concerts and music conferences
- Articles and documentation on the site are freely accessible but the content is protected by copyright
Virtual Library of Musicology (ViFaMusik)
- Portal for music and musicology, providing links to numerous sites offering scholarly research and online resources
- Advanced search options enable simultaneous searching across multiple catalogues