Music

If it has to do with music, it's probably at Weeks Music Library! Below you can find a list of what types of materials are in the Music Library and where you can find them.

For more help navigating the Music Library, you can view or download our floor plans.

• Music scores
  • 2nd floor, in the wing facing Lake Osceola.
  • "Oversize Scores" are near the north-east end of the wing.
  • "Miniature Scores" are near the center of the wing.
• Books about music
  • 2nd floor, in the wing facing the new Patricia Louise Frost Music Studios.
• ​Music journals and magazines
  • 2nd floor, in the wing facing Lake Osceola.
  • Current issues are shelved along the wall closest to the doorway.
  • Past issues are bound together by volume and shelved between current issues and scores.
• Audio and video
  • 1st floor, behind the circulation desk.
  • Ask a staff member for help.
  • DVDs are also available on the 1st floor of Richter Library.
• Special music collections
  • The Larry Taylor-Billy Matthews Musical Theater Archive
  • The Frank Cooper Music Facsimile Collection
  • The Camner Family Music Collection
  • 1st floor, behind the circulation desk.
  • Ask a staff member for help.

uSearch searches the collections of the entire University of Miami Libraries, as well as many of our databases and millions of electronic resources.

Visit the uSearch help guide for more information about uSearch.

• Use quotation marks when searching for phrases (“Wizard of Oz”).
• Be careful with drop-down menus; they can really change your search!
• Keyword searches (“anywhere in the record” in uSearch) are useful when you aren’t exactly sure where the terms you’re searching will show up.
• For scores or sheet music, narrow your search by including the type of score (“vocal score,” “parts”) or publisher (“Dover,” “Hal Leonard”).
• For recordings, narrow your search by including performers or ensembles (“Kristin Chenoweth,” “London Symphony”), conductors (“Dudamel”), or record labels (“Sony”, “EMI”)
• If you don’t get any results, broaden your search.
• If you need help, ask us!  

• If you aren’t sure how to spell a name (Rachmaninov or Rachmaninoff?), add an asterisk after the letters you are sure of (Rachminino*) to search for multiple versions of the name.
• Use the original language of a title (“Nozze di Figaro,” not “Marriage of Figaro”).
  • If you do not know the full foreign title, limit your title search to words that are the same in either language (“Figaro”).
  • Leave off initial articles (“Nozze di Figaro,” not “Le Nozze di Figaro”).
  • “Nickname” titles (like “Moonlight” sonata) do not always appear as part of the title information.
• If the work doesn’t have a unique title, search for the plural form of its genre (such as “symphonies,” “concertos,” “sonatas,” or “quartets”) as a Title or Keyword.
  • If the work has an opus or thematic catalog number, add the number as a Keyword. You don’t need to include “op.” or “K.” or “BWV” or any similar thematic catalog abbreviations.
    • “Mozart” as Author and “symphonies” as Keyword and “181” as Keyword would find his symphony no. 23, K. 181.
  • If the work has only a serial number (violin concerto no. 3) you can enter “no. 3” or "3" as a Keyword.
  • If the work has no opus, thematic catalog, or serial number, try adding the key as a Keyword phrase (“g major”).
  • For works with a specific solo instrument (piano sonatas, violin concertos) you can add the instrument as a Keyword
  • For chamber works, you can enter the type of work as a Keyword phrase (“string quartets,” “brass sextets, “wind quintets” or “woodwind quintets).

Searching for a particular jazz or popular album, or a full musical theater recording or score is usually fairly simple. Searching for a specific song within a larger work can sometimes be difficult.

• Search all terms as Keywords (not Title or Author, etc.)
• Enter a song title as a phrase within quotation marks (“I’ve got you under my skin”).
  • Use the original language of a title (“Desafinado” instead of “Off-Key” or “Out of Tune”).
  • Make sure you are typing the correct title phrase (Dorothy’s song from Wizard of Oz is “Over the Rainbow,” not “Somewhere over the Rainbow”).
• If you are getting no results, try searching for the larger work that contains the song (“Wicked” instead of “Defying Gravity”).

Before you begin your research, you need to determine what your topic is.

• Are you researching a piece of music that you will be performing?
• Are you studying the history of a musical instrument, or style or genre of music?
• Are you trying to find out how a particular composer influenced those who followed?
• Are you looking into the social aspects of a type of music?
• Are you examining how music affects the brain?
• Are you preparing a method or guide to playing an instrument or performing a specific type of music?

Knowing what you're researching will help you look in the right places.

Music research involves a wide variety of sources:

• Books
• Scores and sheet music
• Journals and articles
• Audio recordings
• Video recordings
• Databases
• Websites
• Live performances and performance reviews
• Interviews with musicians
• Lessons and methods

Ask yourself which sources will work best for your topic. Some of these may be available online, while others will be available at the library.

If we do not have something you need, ask! We can try to get it for you.

There are millions of information sources out there, from books and journals to websites and multimedia. Trying to find the most useful information for your research can be daunting. When you're doing academic research, it's especially important to make sure that the sources you find are helpful and not harmful to your work.

One way to determine if a resource is useful to you or not is to apply the CRAAP Method (sometimes called the CRAAP Test):

Currency: When was the information published? Is it up-to-date? Does your topic require current information, or would older sources work?

Relevance: Does this information relate to your topic? Who is the intended audience? Is the information at an appropriate level for your purposes?

Authority: Who is the author or source of the information? What are the author's credentials? Is he or she qualified to write on this topic?

Accuracy: Is the information accurate and supported by evidence? Does the language or tone seem unbiased? Are there spelling, grammar, or typographical errors?

Purpose: What is the purpose of the information? Is it to inform, teach, sell, entertain, or pursuade? Does the author make his or her intentions or purpose clear? Is the point-of-view objective and impartial, or are there biases?

For more information about the CRAAP Method, visit the links below:

Evaluating Information for Academic Quality (video by NYIT Libraries)

How to Evaluate Resources using the CRAAP Test (Gettysburg College)

The best database depends on what kind of information you want to find:

• Are you looking for articles about popular music?

          Music Periodicals Database and Music Index have historically included more coverage of popular, folk, and world music.

• Do you want to read contemporary reports about 19th-century works and/or performers?

          RIPM is focused on periodicals from 1800-1950.

• Would you like to find not only articles, but also books, dissertations, and other kinds of resources?

          RILM indexes all types of publications about music.
          Proquest Dissertations & Theses includes disserations and similar documents about all kinds of subjects.

• Are you interested in music education, music therapy, music engineering, or music business?

         Try databases in these subjects to get a broader view of your topic.

Visit our "Database List by Subject" for more databases.

EBSCOhost is the platform that hosts RILM, RIPM, and Music Index:

RILM Abstracts of Music Literature features content from the early 1800s through the present, and includes coverage of relevant articles from thousands of journals, many of which are not specifically devoted to music. In addition, it covers a variety of publication and media types including essay collections, conference proceedings, critical editions of music, digital media, dissertations, monographs, online resources, reference materials, reviews, and technical drawings of instruments. Sound recordings and motion pictures that present the results of scholarly research or fieldwork are also included.   

RIPM Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals with Online Archive   indexes the contents of music periodicals published between 1800 and 1950, including articles, reviews, illustrations, music examples, advertisements, and press reviews. In addition, RIPM offers English-language translations of articles from journals in other languages.

Music Index provides citations to scholarly and popular music journals and magazines, indexing more than 690 international music periodicals. Book reviews, reviews of music recordings, tapes, and performances are indexed.

Here are some tutorial YouTube videos about using EBSCOhost databases:

Introduction to EBSCOhost

EBSCOhost Basic Search

EBSCOhost Advanced Searching

Using the EBSCOhost Results List
 

• AllMusic.com
  Covering all genres and styles of music, All Music provides in depth details about artists including biographies, album and song reviews, style descriptions, composition descriptions, and AMG ratings and picks.
• Copyright Resource Center (MPA)
  (Music Publishers Association)
  Provides information, links, and forms related to music and copyright issues.
• Copyright for Music Librarians (MLA)
  (Music Library Association) "A resource for anyone interested in issues of copyright as they apply to the fields of music and music librarianship."
• Dolmetsch Music Dictionary Online
  
• Dolmetsch Online Chart of Musical Symbols
  Presents common musical symbols and their meanings.
• Google Scholar @ UM
  Search Google Scholar with direct links to University of Miami Library Resources. Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations. Google Scholar helps you identify the most relevant research across the world of scholarly research.  If you are within the UM campus or, if from Scholar Preferences you select the University of Miami Libraries, your Google Scholar results will include direct links to items available at UM.  If this information is in a subscription database, you will be prompted to log in with your CaneID username and password.
• Internet Broadway Database
  
• Internet Off-Broadway Database
  
• Internet resources for Music, Theater and Dance
  (Performing Arts Reading Room, Library of Congress)
• Public Domain and Royalty Free Music
  (Public Domain Information Project) A clearinghouse of information about and links to public domain and royalty-free sheet music.
• Themefinder
  Themefinder allows for the searching of musical works by theme or incipit. Currently, Themefinder searches three databases: Classical Instrumental Music, European Folksongs, and 16th-century Latin Motets. Users may search by pitch, interval, scale degree, or contour of the musical line. Results are displayed as a list of works that match the search, along with the theme or incipit of each work.

Weeks Music Library uses a modified version of the Library of Congress Classification System to organize its music scores. You can browse a guide to this system at the link below.

Score Browsing Guide

For tips on searching for music scores, visit the "Using the Library Catalog (uSearch)" tab.

Below is a selected list of collections of digitized scores. Many of these collections also include audio, images, and other primary resources.

• Women Composers Collection (University of Michigan Music Library, via Hathitrust)
  Collection of 19th and early 20th-century music scores by women composers held at the University of Michigan Music Library.
• Contemporary Music Score Collection (UCLA Music Library)
  Digital, open access scores from the Contemporary Score Edition Series published by the UCLA Music Library.
• Open Music Library
  "The Open Music Library is an initiative from Alexander Street to build the world’s largest free index of digital resources for the study of music." Includes 202,000+ scores, 86,000+ albums, 4,000+ videos, and over 1 million articles.
• Digital Music Collections at the Library of Congress
  Sheet music, recordings, images, and more, spanning the history of music in the United States, including folk, jazz, blues, marches and military music, and music from various American composers.
• Iberoamerica Digital
  (Biblioteca Digital del Patrimonio Iberoamericano) A portal which provides access through a single search to digitized materials from the national libraries of Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Spain, Panama and Portugal.
• IMSLP Petrucci Music Library
  The Petrucci Music Library was begun in 2006 by IMSLP (International Music Score Library Project) in order to gathering all public domain music scores and the music scores of any contemporary composers who wish to release them to the public free of charge. IMSLP is governed primarily by Canadian copyright law and, therefore, some works may not be public domain in other countries.
• Music Online: Classical Scores Library
  Contains 400,000+ pages of the most important classical scores and manuscripts, allowing for the study and analysis of more than 8,000 scores. The collection includes works spanning time periods from the Renaissance to the 21st century. Coverage of score types is comprehensive, with full scores, study scores, piano and vocal scores, and piano reductions. The database has been indexed to enable users to search on musically relevant fields, such as composer, work/opus number, key, genre, instrument, time period; as well as score-specific fields, such as score type, duration, editor, arranger, publisher.
• Music Treasures Consortium
  The Library of Congress's Music Treasures Consortium provides access to highly valued music manuscripts and print materials held in some of the world's most renowned music archives, including the British Library, Harvard University, and the Morgan Library & Museum.
• Performing Arts Encyclopedia
  The Performing Arts Encyclopedia is a guide to performing arts resources at the Library of Congress. The Encyclopedia provides access to digitized scores, sheet music, audio reordings, films, photographs, and other materials.
• Sheet Music Consortium
  The Sheet Music Consortium, hosted by the UCLA Digital Library Program, is a cooperative project to build an open collection of digitized sheet music through harvesting metadata from collections around the world.
• Sibley Music Library Music Scores
  The digitized collection of music scores from Eastman School of Music's Sibley Music Library includes over 14,000 digitized manuscripts and scores in the public domain, many of which are unique to Sibley's collection.

This is a list of selected digital collections of scores, manuscripts, and other materials by particular composers and/or performers. Some of these are complete collections and some are collections of selected works.

• Bach, Johann Sebastian: Bach Cantatas Website
• Beethoven, Ludwig van: Beethoven-Haus Digital Archives
• Berlioz, Hector: Berlioz Music Scores
• Ernest Bloch Collection
• Bononcini, Giovanni: Bononcini.org
• Brahms, Johannes: Samtliche Werke (IMSLP)
• Carmichael, Hoagy: Hoagy Carmichael Collection
• Elliot Carter Collection
• Chopin, Frederic: First Editions Online
• Aaron Copland Collection
• Dvorak, Antonin : Souborne vydani dila (IMSLP)

This is a list of selected digital collections of scores, manuscripts, and other materials by particular composers and/or performers. Some of these are complete collections and some are collections of selected works.

• Glenn Gould Archive
• Handel, George Frideric: Complete works
• Haydn, Joseph: Werke (IMSLP)
• Liszt, Franz: Musikalische Werke (IMSLP)
• Lully, Jean-Baptiste: The Jean-Baptiste Lully Collection
• Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Felix: Werke (IMSLP)
• Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus: Neue Mozart-Ausgabe (NMA) Online
• Nazareth, Ernesto: The Nazareth Project
• Oscar Peterson: A Jazz Sensation
• Schubert, Franz: Werke (IMSLP)
• Schumann, Robert: Complete Works
• Sousa, John Philip: The March King: John Philip Sousa

You can find a variety of audio and video formats at Weeks Music Library:

• CDs
• DVDs
• LPs (vinyl records)
• VHS tapes
• Audio cassette tapes

All of these are kept behind the circulation desk. If you give us the call number of an item, we will get it for you.

For tips on searching for recordings, visit the "Using the Library Catalog (uSearch)" tab.

Richter Library also has a collection of DVDs at the first floor Learning Commons.

Lyrics and libretti are shelved under the call numbers ML47-ML54.8. Many of these are housed in Music Reference.

The most frequently used of these books are the ones published by Leyerle Publications. These include

• French opera libretti (ML48 .F74 1999)
• German miscellaneous opera libretti (ML48 .G373 2005)
• Gluck & Monteverdi opera libretti (ML48 .G57 2008)
• Italian belcanto opera libretti (ML48 .I83 2000)
• Italian verismo opera libretti (ML48 .I89 2000)
• Libretti of Russian operas. Vol. 1 (ML48 .L637 2004)
• Handel opera libretti (ML49 .H236 2005)
• The libretti of Mozart's completed operas (ML49 .M83 C315 1997)
• The complete Puccini libretti (ML49 .P977 1993)
• The complete Verdi libretti (ML49 .V484 1994)
• Three Wagner opera libretti (ML49 .W134 2006)
• Four Strauss opera libretti (ML49 .S76 O62 2002)
• Der Ring des Nibelungen (ML50 .W14 R32 2003)
• Selected song texts of great German lieder (ML54.6 .G53 2004)
• Italian song texts from the 17th through the 20th centuries (ML54.6 .I83)
• Italian song texts from the 18th century (ML54.6 .I83 v.2)
• Schumann's complete song texts (ML54.6 .S387 G52 2002)
• Schubert's complete song texts (ML54.6 .S39 G515 1996)
• Richard Strauss' complete song texts (ML54.6 .S77 2004)
• Hugo Wolf's complete song texts (ML54.6 .W6 G55 2000)

Some of the other notable books of lyrics and libretti include

• The complete annotated Gilbert and Sullivan / introduced and edited by Ian Bradley (ML49 .S9 A1 1996)
• The complete lyrics of Irving Berlin / edited by Robert Kimball and Linda Emmet (ML54.6 .B464 K55 2001)
• The new American musical : an anthology from the end of the century / edited and introduced by Wiley Hausam (ML48 .N485 2003)
• The ring of words; an anthology of song texts / selected and translated by Philip L. Miller (ML54.6 .M5 R5 1973)

• Christian Classics Ethereal Library - Hymns and Hymnology by Title
  Full text of dozens of hymnals and books on hymnology.
• Hymnary.org
  "A comprehensive index of 5,028 hymnals, 1,043,148 published hymns, scores and media files, and information." Allows searching by song titles and first lines, hymnal titles, persons, and tunes.

• The Aria Database
  The Aria Database is a collection of information about opera and operatic arias, including translations for many arias and aria texts for those that are not affected by copyright restrictions.
• The LiederNet Archive
  "The world's largest reference archive of texts and translations of art songs and choral works."
• Opera Glass
  Standford's opera web directory contains libretti, source texts, synopses, discographies, and information about composers, librettists, and opera companies.
• Libretto Index
  An index of known libretto pages, arranged by composer and name of the opera.

• Bluegrass Lyrics
  Searchable index of bluegrass song lyrics; also includes links to collections of songs by artist and subgenre.
• The Child Ballads Index
  E-text version of The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, by Francis James Child.
• Folk Music of England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales & America
  Contains information about traditional, popular, and folk tunes from England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and America.
• Popular Songs in American History
  Information on popular and traditional songs from the Colonial and Revolutionary Era to the early 20th century.
• Roud Folk Song Index
  "The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of 143,000 references to songs that have been collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world."
• Roud Folk Song Index on Wikipedia
  Provides a brief description and links to the various folk songs.
• Search the Roud Folk Song Index
  The Roud Folk Song Index search page.
• Traditional & Folk Songs - Lyrics
  A collection of over 3700 lyrics compiled by Traditional Music Library and sorted alphabetically.
• Women's Folksong Lyrics & Historical Notes
  Index of folk songs by women, compiled by musician and historian Gerri Gribi.

The University of Miami requires its graduate students to submit Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs). Below are some links that will help you with this process

• UM's ETD information webpage
• What You Need to Know About ETDs
• UM Libraries Guide to Formatting Your ETD

• Getting Started With Research (UM Libraries)
  UM Libraries guide to getting started with research.
• University of Miami Writing Center
  The Writing Center at the University of Miami strives to help all members of the university community learn more about writing and become better writers. The Writing Center is part of the College of Arts & Sciences Writing Program, and provdes services to Coral Gables, Medical, and RSMAS campuses.  The Writing Center offers free, one-on-one assistance with all types of writing concerns. Services are to grad students and faculty as well as undergraduates, for research, grant writing, as well as student learning and writing.
• Citing Music Sources
  (University of Western Ontario)
• Citing sources (Duke University)
  
• Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL)
  Free online resources for researching and writing.

UM Libraries' Citation and Research Management Tools Guide has information about citation management systems like RefWorks, EndNote, Mendeley, and Zotero.
 

UM Libraries Plagiarism Information Page
UM Undergraduate Honor Code
UM Graduate Honor Code