Music
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Shelf Arrangement for Sheet Music
How is sheet music (scores and performance parts) organized on the shelves? See this outline of the Library of Congress Classification for call numbers beginning with “M”.
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Grove Music Online
Consult the full text of several music dictionaries rolled into one! Grove Music Online is a fully-searchable online encyclopedia covering all aspects of the history of music, with articles about composers (including lists of works), performers, styles and genres, countries and cities, and instruments. Grove Music Online contains the New Grove Dictionaries of Opera, Jazz, Musical Instruments, American Music, and the 29-volume New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.
Articles in journals and magazines
To find articles from journals and magazines on a particular topic, use an article index.
Indexes of music journals and magazines:
- International Index to Music Periodicals indexes articles in over 375 music periodicals. Abstracts are provided for articles indexed since 1996, and the full text of articles in 42 journals is provided since 1997. Additionally, IIMP indexes articles in over 100 journals going back to 1990 and earlier.
- RILM Abstracts indexes and abstracts literature about music from 1969 to the present, including periodical articles, Festschriften articles, books, reviews, and dissertations. Scope is international, but all abstracts are in English.
- Music Index Online indexes articles in 670 international music journals and magazines, from 1979 to the present.
- RIPM: Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals (1800-1950) indexes articles in over 50 periodicals published in 15 countries during the nineteenth century.
Indexes of journals, magazines, and newspapers across many disciplines, including the arts and humanities:
- ProQuest Direct indexes 5,000+ magazines, journals, and newspapers. It contains the full text of over 2,000 journals and 150+ newspapers.
- New York Times Historical (1851-2001 digital archive) includes a digitized image of every backfile issue of The New York Times from cover to cover, including news stories, editorials, photos, graphics, and advertisements. From 2001 to date, the New York Times is available in full text from ProQuest Direct.
- American Periodicals Series, 1740-1900 contains the full text of American magazines and journals that originated between 1741 and 1900. APS Online features over 1,100 periodicals spanning nearly 200 years. Digitized page images reproduce the publications as they appeared when originally published.
Books
Find books on your topic by searching The CAT, the library's online catalog.
Dissertations
- Dissertation Abstracts indexes and abstracts 1.4 million doctoral dissertations from over 1000 North American and European universities, since 1851. Abstracts are available for dissertations since 1980.
- Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology-Online is an international database of bibliographic descriptions of completed dissertations and new dissertation topics in the fields of musicology, music theory, and ethnomusicology, as well as in related musical, scientific, and humanistic disciplines.
WorldCat enables you to search for books, scores, CDs, and videos on your topic that are owned by other libraries, not just Penn State's. You can borrow them by using Penn State's Interlibrary Loan service, called ILLiad.