Basic Music Research Guide

Check that your sources are valid the easy way by answering these questions:

• WHO: Who wrote/created this source?
• WHAT: What are the author's motivations in creating this source? Are they academic or opinionated?
• WHERE: Where are the cited sources in the bibliography from? Do they appear reliable?
• WHEN: When did they create this source? Have there been advances since then?
• WHY: Why is the author qualified discuss this subject?
• HOW: How did you find this source? Did you use a database?

Peer-reviewed sources are also generally reliable, but you should always make your own intelligent evaluation of a source before you take it as fact!

Maybe your source was written by a scholar, maybe your source was written for a 5th grade music project. Which one of these is likely to be more accurate and more trusted by your professor? That's why you need evaluation.