Finding Books | Finding Scores and Recordings | Using Reference Sources
Finding Journal and Newspaper Articles and Dissertations | Obtaining Information from Other Libraries
Other WWW Resources for Music and Music History Research | Citing Sources

The following page contains general information about resources and tools available at the University Library to assist researchers in the study of music and music history. The research process for each researcher will be slightly different, so this guide cannot cover every possibility. Please feel free to contact the Reference Department staff at 603-862-1544 or at the Reference Desk on the main floor (Level 3) of the Dimond Library should you have any questions regarding your individual research project.

The library's holdings are best accessed through our online catalog, called Triple I (III) or Innopac. This system can be searched by author, title, subject, journal title, or key word. Help in using the online catalog is available onscreen and at the Reference Desk. The library catalog can be accessed from your home, dorm, or office via the Internet.

You can use the list of Library of Congress subject headings to draw up a list of subject headings related to your topic. These are located in the Reference area on the main floor of Dimond Library. You can also use the "related subjects" entries, the "Show Similar Items" feature on the online catalog, or click on the subject links in the Web version of the catalog to extend your original subject search. Examples of possible subjects include:

• Composition (Music)
• Music - United States - 20th Century
• Beethoven, Ludwig van, 1770-1827 - Criticism and Interpretation
• Feminism and Music
• Jazz - History and Criticism
• Musical Form
• Violin and Piano Music
• Composers - Germany - Biography

The University Library's books are arranged by the Library of Congress classification system. Books about music (music literature) have call numbers starting ML, while music teaching/pedagogy are classified in MT. These are all located on Level 5 in Dimond Library.

Materials located at the UNH Manchester campus library can be requested by calling or speaking with a staff member at the Loan Desk in Dimond Library.

The Boston Library Consortium's Virtual Catalog allows current UNH students, faculty, and staff to search and directly request books from the Virtual Catalog's participating members. Books usually arrive at Dimond Library from 1 to 5 days from the request date and you will be notified by email when your item is available for pick-up. The loan period is 28 days from the date of pick-up at the Loan Desk in Dimond Library and items cannot be renewed. If the book you want is not owned by the UNH Library and is not available through the Virtual Catalog, see Obtaining Information from Other Libraries below for additional guidance.

WorldCat allows searching of authors, titles, and subjects across multiple library catalogs. Remote access to this database is limited to UNH students, faculty, or staff. Read these instructions for more information about accessing WorldCat from off campus. Interlibrary loan requests for books not owned by the UNH Library may also be placed through WorldCat; see Obtaining Information from Other Libraries below for additional information.

Under the Library of Congress classification scheme that the UNH Library uses, scores have call numbers beginning with M only and these are housed in the OVERSIZE section on Level 5 of Dimond Library. Miniscores (having call numbers starting with MS) are shelved separately at the end of the FOLIO section on Level 5 of Dimond Library.

Recordings are located in the Multimedia Room on Level 2 of Dimond Library and all formats may be borrowed.

The catalog can also help more easily identify scores or recordings in the library collection. There are several ways to search depending on how much information you have about the work or how general or specific a search you want to do. Some of these strategies are described below.

• Use a composer's name (Tchaikovsky, Peter Ilich, for instance) as the author. Then, after clicking on the "Limit this Search" button, choose material type "Printed Music" from the pulldown menu to identify scores for Tchaikovsky's works or choose material type "Music Recording" to identify recordings of Tchaikovsky's works, which may include compact discs or LPs.

• For a more specific search, use the Author/Title search option, inserting the composer's name as author and the genre in the title field. Examples of genres that may be used include quartet*, symphon*, concerto*, sonata*, or opera*. The asterisk following each of these words truncates the term so that the catalog search will find records containing either the singular or plural form of the word desired. For example, Haydn's sonatas can be found by using Haydn in the author field and sonata* as the keyword in the title field.

• It is also possible to search by including the work's key or instrument or opus number in title field search. Examples of this in an Author/Title search include Haydn and E flat major or Britten and piano or Tchaikovsky and op. 44. Always use "op." and not "opus" when searching.

• Names of works can also be used in title or keyword searches; for example, " 1812 Overture."

• Genres can also be used as subject terms. For example, using "Choruses, Sacred" as a subject term provides you with the list of subject headings starting with that term. You can then scan the list of headings and subheadings to identify more specific topics of interest, such as "Choruses, Sacred - Mixed Voices - 4 Parts - Unaccompanied."

As mentioned in the section above about finding books, other catalogs are also available for searching. While the Virtual Catalog would be useful for searching and requesting scores, media such as recordings and DVDs are generally not available for borrowing from this source. WorldCat provides flexible searching for scores and recordings across multiple library catalogs. Interlibrary loan requests for scores and recordings not owned by the UNH Library may also be placed through WorldCat; see Obtaining Information from Other Libraries below for additional guidance.

The reference collection not only has general encyclopedias and dictionaries such as the World Book Encyclopedia and Webster's Dictionary, but also has many specialized encyclopedias and dictionaries as well. Other reference works include directories, statistical sources, and bibliographies. Some of the reference works you may find useful for researching music or the history of music include:

• Music Reference and Research Materials: An Annotated Bibliography (REF ML 113 .D83 1997)
• A Basic Music Library: Essential Scores and Sound Recordings (Ref ML 113 .B3 1997)
• Historical Sets, Collected Editions, and Monuments of Music: A Guide to Their Contents, 3rd ed. (Ref ML 113 .H52 1980) (2 vol.)
• Musical America. International Directory of the Performing Arts (REF ML 12 .M88)
• College Fight Songs (REF M 1945.S8 C6)
• A Chronicle of American Music, 1700-1995 (Ref ML 200 .H15 1996)
• The Rock Song Index: Essential Information on the 7,500 Most Important Songs of Rock and Roll (REF ML 128.R6 P65 1997)
• Schwann Spectrum (Ref ML 156.2 .S69)
• MusicHound Folk: The Essential Album Guide (Ref ML 156.4.F5 M94 1998)
• Hymntune Index and Related Hymn Materials (Ref ML 3186 .W2 1998)
• Music Business Handbook & Career Guide (Ref ML 3795 .B33 1995)

• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (Ref ML 100 .N48 2001) (29 vol.) Also available online. Remote access to this database is restricted to UNH students, faculty, and staff. Read these instructions for more information about accessing this database from outside the library.
• The New Grove Dictionary of American Music (Ref ML 101.U6 N48 1986)
• The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz (Ref ML 102.J3 N48 2001)
• The American Musical Film Song Encyclopedia (Ref ML 102.M68 H57 1999)
• The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music (Ref ML 100 .G16 1998) (10 vol.)
• The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera (Ref ML 102.O6 R67 1996)
• The Encyclopedia of Popular Music (Ref ML 102.P66 G84 1998) (8 vol.)
• The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Ref ML 102.R6 R64 2001)
• Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (Ref ML 105 .B16 2001)
• International Dictionary of Black Composers (Ref ML 390 .I58 1999)
• A Dictionary of Musical Quotations (Ref ML 66 .C86 1985)
• Women and Music in America since 1900: An Encyclopedia (Ref ML 82 .W625 2002) (2 vol.)
• Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart: Allgemeine EnzyklopŠdie der Musik (Ref ML 100 .M92 1994)

Many of the Internet-accessible indexes the UNH Library subscribes to are limited to use by UNH faculty, students, and staff. Read these instructions for more information about accessing such restricted databases from outside the library.

• RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 1969+
• Academic Search Premier 1984+
• JSTOR Digitized Journals (Among the music journals included full text in JSTOR are Acta Musicologica, American Music, International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, Journal of Music Theory, Journal of the American Musicological Society, Music & Letters, Musical Quarterly, Musical Times, Revue de musicologie, and Yearbook for Traditional Music.)
• Project Music (Scholarly Journals Online) (Among the music journals included full text in Project Muse are Computer Music Journal, Latin American Music Review, Leonardo Music Journal, Notes, The Opera Quarterly, and Philosophy of Music Education Review . Online full text for these journals is generally available from 2000/2001+.)
• Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe Full text of numerous newspapers, some magazines, and other news sources from the United States and around the world.
• Web of Science 1977+ (Includes Arts & Humanities Citation Index)
• ingenta (formerly UnCover Plus) Fall 1988+
• Dissertation Abstracts International (Digital Dissertations) 1864+
• RISM: Repertoire international des sources musicales (International Inventory of Musical Sources) 1600+

• Music Index 1949+ (Ref ML 118 .M84)
• Humanities Index 1974+ (Ref A I3 .H8)
• Biography Index 1946+ (Ref IND Z 5301 .B5)

If you allow enough time for your research (i.e. begin your research well in advance of the due date for your paper or presentation), you may be able to take advantage of the library's Interlibrary Loan service to obtain books, journal articles, and other materials not available at the University Library. Interlibrary Loan requests are submitted online through a system called ILLiad. The first time you use ILLiad, you must set up your individual account. After that you simply need to login to ILLiad and complete the form for the type of material you are requesting. Please include as much information as you can for each item you request. Interlibrary Loan materials are generally received within 10 days to 4 weeks; the average time is about 2.5 weeks (but can take longer). Undergraduates are limited to six requests (books and articles) per week. This service is available only to UNH students, faculty, and staff.

You may also request a book (not journal articles) that our library does not own by using the ILL (InterLibrary Loan) icon when searching WorldCat. Submit a search in WorldCat and if our library does not own the book, click the ILL icon on the screen and fill out the ILL request. For further help with this library service, ask a librarian at the Reference desk.

There is a wealth of information (and sometimes misinformation) available on the WWW. Any researcher must use critical judgment to evaluate the quality of Web resources just he or she would any other source, regardless of medium. The following listings are a sampling of some sites on the WWW focusing on various aspects of music or music history:

• DW3 Classical Music Resources (Duke University Music Library)
• Ethnomusicology, Folk Music, and World Music (University of Washington Music Library)
• Institute for Music Research (University of Texas at San Antonio)
  • CAIRSS for Music This is "a bibliographic database of music research literature in music education, music psychology, music therapy, and music medicine"
• Internet Resources for Music Scholars (Loeb Music Library, Harvard University)
• Glossary of Musical Terms (Naxos.com)
• The Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music (part of Special Collections at the Milton S. Eisenhower Library of The Johns Hopkins University)
• Librarians' Index to the Internet: Music Topics
• Music Theory Online: A Journal of Criticism, Commentary, Research, and Scholarship
• Virginia Tech Multimedia Music Dictionary
• Worldwide Internet Music Resources (William and Gayle Cook Music Library, Indiana University School of Music)
• WWW Sites of Interest to Musicologists (American Musicological Society)

Appropriate citation of sources and references is an important part of the research process. The Reference Department website has a page of examples of footnotes, endnotes, and bibliography entries for books and periodicals following the style of Kate L. Turabian's A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. Other style manuals, such as the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, and The Chicago Manual of Style are available at the Reference Desk. Citing electronic sources can be difficult and is a developing area at this time. There is some online guidance for citing electronic resources in MLA style and APA style. Also, Electronic Styles: A Handbook for Citing Electronic Information is located at the Reference Desk and provides many additional examples.

Please send questions or comments on this research guide to