Q. I need help finding scholarly sources for my music paper

For scholarly sources on music, I would recommend the following:

1. For books, use UMD Discover. You can limit to books if you are getting too many sound recording, video, or printed music results. For scholarly sources, look for things published by university presses, or that have the note "included bibliographical references" or "includes index." 

2. For articles, try these:

a) JSTOR everything in here should be scholarly and full text. TIP: before searching, go to the Browse menu and choose By Subject, then choose Music. That will narrow down your search to just music journals. Many or most journals in JSTOR have a "moving wall," meaning the most recent year or two or three is not available. 

b) Project Muse. Similar to JSTOR but will have more current content. Like JSTOR, it might be best to limit to music journals by going to the menu>Browse>More Journals and then use the limiters on the left to limit to Research Area=Music

3. If you want to go more in depth or if the above are not working out, the most comprehensive sources for scholarly music sources would be:

a) RILM. This is primarily an index and not everything included will be full text but it comprehensively keeps track of the best scholarly sources on music. Use the Find@UMD buttons to see if we have full text access.

b) Google Scholar. This has a familiar interface and provides access to a lot of stuff. TIP: before searching, make sure you are logged in to Google (you can use your UMD account), then go to the menu>Settings>Library Links and search for and add "University of Maryland Libraries." Now when you search, you will get customized results that show what you have access to through the University of Maryland. 

I hope that helps get you started. Please let me know if you have any additional questions!

Best wishes,

Steve Henry

Music Librarian