Guides: Music: Home

Featured Resource

Naxos Music Library This link opens in a new window
Naxos Music Library is a comprehensive classical music online streaming library containing titles spanning medieval music to modern, jazz, electronic, world music, pop, rock, and more. It includes compose biographies, glossary of musical terms, opera libretti and synopses, and more.

Features:

Browse by artist, composer, or category
Advanced search options include featured instrument, performing group, composer, arranger, etc.
Resources for musicology, aural training, and work analysis
Includes study guides and graded music exam playlists
Designed to support K-12 music curriculum teaching Music Educators National Conference Standards

Collections in Library

Find books on music, instruction, and study in the M-MT section located on Stack Level 3.

The M-MT section in the Reference Room contains encyclopedias and dictionaries, including the New Grove Encyclopedia of Music & Musicians.

The Curriculum Library (located off Stack 3) contains music education guides, kits, instruments, and other music related tools to use in your classroom.

Browse our collection of classical music from composer such as Bach, Mozart, Chopin and more. Check them out at the Circulation Desk.

Scores from well-known composers as well as musicals and other productions are available in the 4th Floor Hallway.

Music journals such as Music Educators Journal, Instrumentalist, and Opera News are available in the Periodicals section on the 4th Floor.

Getting Started

IDENTIFY KEYWORDS
The building block of a library database search is keywords. Keywords are central ideas or terms within your research question or problem.

BOOLEAN SEARCH OPERATORS
Once you have your keywords identified (2-3 is a good place to begin), you then need to connect them together in a way the database understands how to search. This is done using the Boolean search operators AND, OR, and NOT. Connecting keywords using these search operators creates a search string.

AND - narrow search, used to combine terms together and focus search results
OR - broad search, used to includes results that contain similar or like words, such as synonyms
NOT - narrow search by exclusion, used to exclude results containing a particular keyword

SEARCH STRINGS
We call the written version of your keywords with boolean search operators the search string. Writing your search string at the beginning of your research process will help you better approach searching in library databases.

Example search string
music OR instrument AND jazz OR blues AND performance