CMU LibGuides: Music: Music in the Secondary School

Quick Links

Music Education Journals

Research Tips

Literature Search

Write out your search terms and keep track of what you've already tried
Example: "block scheduling" AND music AND "high school"

Is there another way to describe what you want?
Example: elementary school could also be K-5
more search tips...
Try the Everything search on the Libraries Home Page
You'll see lots of full text articles and books that may be relevant to your topic. The more relevant articles will appear first but the number of results can be overwhelming.
Next search Music Index and RILM Music Abstracts. These databases are not included in the Everything results because they are from a competing vendor. They are specifically indexing music journal titles so you don't really need to add music as a search term like you often do in interdisciplinary databases.
ProQuest and ERIC are really good for education articles. You can often find full text music related articles in them.
You might also try Google Scholar. There's a way to configure it so you can see what CMU has full text.
Explore these Research Tools to help you connect with full text, find additional research, learn about research methods, plan a systematic review, and manage your resources.

General Tips

Language and Date Range are two quick ways to narrow down your search results.

Look for the Get It button within databases to see if there's full text, or if we subscribe in print, or to request materials via Interlibrary Loan (ILLiad). The Journal Search will also give you an idea of what we have access to online for journal titles.

Notice the length of the article you find. Is it substantial enough for this assignment along with being from a scholarly publication?

Use Ulrich's to find out more information about a journal title (e.g. is it scholarly? which databases are indexing content?).

Notice

What type of source?
Is it scholarly? How can you tell?
When was it published?

Teaching Music Through Performance Books (GIA Publications)

Sample Search Terms
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y17oJnwZg0qFUX67H7NfeMStcCz9T-t04rhAIcPsgo4/edit

List of Databases with Descriptions

Music Index with Full Text This link opens in a new window
Covers every aspect of classical and popular music. In addition to full-text journals, it includes reviews of performances as well as reviews of sound recordings and videos. There are 862 indexed and abstracted journals (366 of them are peer-reviewed).
RILM Abstracts of Music Literature This link opens in a new window
Citations and abstracts for scholarly articles, books, commentaries, conference proceedings, dissertations, festschriften, reviews, internet resources, motion pictures, sound recordings and technical drawings of musical instruments are all covered by RILM. Concert reviews, recording notes, and pedagogical manuals are indexed if they are of scholarly interest. Covers 1967-present.
ProQuest This link opens in a new window
Mega-database that searches many interdisciplinary databases together - journals, newspapers, magazines; also industry reports.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Articles in important academic journals from all disciplines (latest few years not available); also eBooks from leading academic publishers, as well as some images.
ERIC: Education Resources Information Center (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Central resource for articles and documents on all aspects of education. Contains citations, abstracts, and some full text. Database Guide
PsycARTICLES This link opens in a new window
1894-present.The full text of nearly 80 journals from the American Psychological Association as well as its imprint, the Educational Publishing Foundation (EPF), and from allied organizations including the Canadian Psychological Association and the Hogrefe Publishing Group. It includes all journal articles, book reviews, letters to the editor and errata from each journal.
PsycINFO This link opens in a new window
1887-present. American Psychological Association's renowned resource for abstracts of scholarly journal articles, book chapters, books, and dissertations, it is the largest resource devoted to peer-reviewed literature in behavioral science and mental health. Database Guide. Also see definitions of methodologies.

WorldCat This link opens in a new window
Contains over 48 million records, covering all materials cataloged by OCLC member libraries around the world.

Citation Styles

Zotero This link opens in a new window This free tool enables you to manage your research, store it, annotate it, organize it, cite as you write with thousands of citation styles, and more (see Tool Guide).Also try ZoteroBib - a free service to help you build a bibliography instantly from any computer or device, without creating an account or installing any software. If you need to reuse sources across multiple projects or build a shared research library, we recommend using Zotero instead.
ZoteroBib This link opens in a new window "Helps you build a bibliography instantly from any computer ordevice, without creating an account or installing any software. It’s brought to you by the team behind Zotero, the powerful open-source research tool recommended by thousands of universities worldwide, so you can trust it to help you seamlessly add sources and produce perfect bibliographies. If you need to reuse sources across multiple projects or build a shared research library, we recommend using Zotero instead."

Contact Me

Kristin Heath
Music & Catalog Librarian
Hunt Library, 4th floor, Room 410C
412-268-7267
kheath@andrew.cmu.edu

Music Research Guide