UWM Libraries Research and Course Guides: MUSIC 102: American Popular Music: Scholarly Databases

Music Databases

The library's databases include several focused on music and the performing arts. Some are entirely full-text, meaning they include access to the article itself, and others also include information about books and articles you may need to request from elsewhere. Some are focused on scholarly writings, and some include magazines and trade publications. All of them are helpful in exploring and identifying things you may want to read for your research.

RILM Abstracts of Music Literature
RILM (Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale) is an international music bibliography. It includes scholarly journals, books, book chapters, and dissertations, in many languages. Titles, and often abstracts, of foreign language texts are available in English. Some, but not all, are available in full-text. Best for: exhaustive scholarly searches, foreign language scholarship, book chapters and dissertations.
Music Index
Music Index is just that: an index or bibliography of periodicals and other writings about music. The online database covers literature written since 1970, and there are printed volumes covering 1949-1970 in the Music Collection (RMU ML 118 .M841x). Again, some listings will include a link to the full-text, but others will not. Best for: non-scholarly sources, popular music.
Music Periodicals Database
The Music Periodicals Databases includes indexing of hundreds of music periodicals, and full text of many of them. It is focused on more recent periodicals, especially in the last ten years, but includes some indexing back to 1874. Best for: recent scholarship, album reviews, popular music.

RISM
Contains entries on music manuscripts after 1600, allowing you to find details and locations of original source material.

Interdisciplinary Databases

JSTOR
JSTOR provides full-text access to archival and often current issues of thousands of scholarly journals and ebboks. For some journals, there is a delay of a 1+ years before content is available on JSTOR, so it may not always have the most recent content.
Project Muse
Project MUSE includes full text acess to thousands of ebooks and hundreds of journals, as well as citations of additional content.
Academic Search Complete
Multidisciplinary database with thousands of full-text journals, and citation information from thousands more. Some content goes back to the 19th centurys.
Web of Science
Despite the title, one of the three databases in Web of Science is the Arts & Humanities Citation Index, which indexes nearly 2000 journals, and help track how often journals or articles are cited.
Dissertations & Theses Global
Collection of disserations and theses, especially full texts of those added since 1997. This is a great resource for information about more obscure topics, and for scores by graduate composition students.