Research Guides: Basic Music Research Tools: Indexes and Abstracts

Overview

Indexes and abstracts can be extremely useful if you do not know if adequate resources for your research project exist. These collections find periodical information on your topic and summarize the contents of those articles.

Reading the full articles may take a little more work. If the articles you find are not available you can use indexes to see where you might find a copy for your use.

Online

Music Index
The Music Index, produced by Harmonie Park Press, is the single most comprehensive subject-author guide to music periodical literature. The Music Index has been available in print since 1949. The Music Index online coverage spans from 1976 to the present and contains surveyed data from 775 international music periodicals from over 40 countries, with English translations from 22 languages. ISBNs are not part of a searchable field in this database.
Historical Abstracts with Full-Text
Core international history database now includes unique full-text coverage of nearly 200 journals and 100 books. It also provides indexing for over 1700 journals from 1964 to the present.
America: History & Life with Full-Text
Core American history database now includes unique full-text coverage of nearly 200 journals and 100 books. Information on articles, books, book reviews, and dissertations on U.S. and Canadian history from prehistory to the present. Covers more than 2000 international worldwide. All aspects of historical research. Time span: 1964-present.
RIPM Retrospective with RIPM Online Archive of Music Periodicals
RIPM is the primary research tool for accessing 19th- and early 20th- century periodical literature on music. The resource provides an annotated index to over 135 important journals, with more than half being available as full-text. New titles are added every 6 months. The journals covered are in 14 different languages and originate chiefly from Europe and North America.
RILM Music
An international bibliography of nearly 500,000 scholarly writings on music and related disciplines in 140 languages. RILM indexes articles, books, conference proceedings, bibliographies, catalogues, dissertations, festchriften, iconographies, critical commentaries to complete works, ethnographic recordings and videos, reviews and more.

Encompasses historical musicology, ethnomusicology, instruments and voice, librarianship, performance practice and notation, theory and analysis, pedagogy, liturgy, dance, criticism, music therapy, and interdisciplinary studies on music and various other fields, including literature, dramatic arts, visual arts, acoustics, aesthetics, anthropology, sociology, linguistics and semiotics, mathematics, philosophy, physiology, psychology, and physics. 1967 - present.
ISBNs are not part of a searchable field in this database.
Do not attempt to search on authors by truncating the first name. Last, F? will often result in zero hits. Try searching on Last or Last, First