Music Index
Script
All of the resources shown in this video are available to Western students, staff and faculty and can be accessed through the Western Libraries website or library catalogue. Licensed, online resources can be accessed from off-campus. You will need to log in with your Western ID and password.
Music Index is a bibliographic database. It's an easy-to-use tool for finding references to literature. Almost all of the references in Music Index are journal articles and the focus is on English language literature.
Comparing Music Index to RILM, RILM also covers non-journal and non-English sources. See our video on "RILM" for more details. https://youtu.be/aeo-uR3-YB0
To get to Music Index, start at the Music Library homepage, www.lib.uwo.ca/music. Look for the section called "Key Research Resources." Find the link to Music Index. If you're off-campus, you'll need to login to our proxy server with your Western ID and password.
And here we are in Music Index. Searching Music Index is fairly straightforward. In this case we'll look for articles on "Charlie Christian" AND "guitar" AND "bebop." Once you've found some search results, take a look at their details, including the date of publication, volume number, issue number, page numbers and abstract (if there is one). If you'd like to get a copy of any of these articles, click the "Get it @ Western" button. See our "Getting Gull Text" video for more details. https://youtu.be/8XamSjAaH-E
You have the option of changing these search fields on the right. So if you were after an article with a particular author, or title, subject terms, you can search for those here. Let's see what this search comes up with. Okay, just three articles but these three articles are probably on exactly what we want. You can see the "Get it @ Western" buttons here, and you can see the source types over on the left. Two of these results are in magazines and one is in an academic journal.
The first hit is in a magazine called "Acoustic Guitar." You can see the date of publication, the volume number, the issue number, and the page numbers. If you'd like to know more about this article, click on the title.
This article is from a journal called "Annual Review of Jazz Studies," and again we have the publication date, the volume number, and the page numbers.
Finally, this article is from a magazine called "Guitar World." This one actually has an abstract, although it's rather brief.
If you'd like to get the full text, click on the "Get it @ Western" button... and we'll cover this in greater detail in our "Getting Full Text" video. https://youtu.be/8XamSjAaH-E
Most citation styles aren't very clear on how to cite music sources. See Indiana University Bloomington's "A Guide for Music Citation - Chicago/Turabian Style" for advice. https://guides.libraries.indiana.edu/c.php?g=516265&p=3529690
These tips can help you, but finding music can be extremely tricky. If you've spent 10 minutes searching and still haven't found what you're after, ask us for help! We can be reached by email musref at uwo.ca, by phone 519-661-3913 or in person in the Music Library. You can contact me, Dan Sich, the Teaching and Learning Librarian covering Music, at dsich2 at uwo.ca or Brian McMillan, Head of the Music Library, at bmcmill2 at uwo.ca.
Western Libraries Music Library: https://www.lib.uwo.ca/music
