Your library assignment for MUSC 1201 asks you to find and evaluate journal articles related to the topic of your final paper. The library subscribes to hundreds of databases where you can find journal articles, but let's take a look at three which will work best for your assignment!
RILM (or Repértoire internationale de littérature musicale) Abstracts of Music Literature is our primary music research index... notice I said index? RILM functions to collect all of the information about literature (whether that be books, articles, reviews, or many other formats) about music and organize it in one place. That organized bibliographic information is what we call an index, as it tells us what is out there and how to find it. It doesn't, however, give us the full text to the book or article.
Want to see if we have access to an article you find in RILM? Look for the Find@MTA button which will link you out to the full text access if we have it. If we don't, you'll see a link to request a copy via interlibrary loan, which means we would borrow it from another library.
Click here to learn more about interlibrary loans!JSTOR is a large arts & humanities database which is a great resource to search not only for music but for most other courses you might be taking at MtA. Unlike RILM, JSTOR is a full-text database, meaning you can read anything you find there right away!
ProQuest is a search platform which allows us to search a huge number of databases of simultaneously. If you search "ProQuest" in our A-Z Database list for the library, you'll see that we have 72 different ProQuest databases! That's a lot, but it isn't as scary as you think. Some ProQuest databases, like the Arts & Humanities, are more focussed on specific disciplines.
Other versions of ProQuest, like ProQuest (All Databases), or ProQuest One Academic, will search a much broader range of journals and databases but that also means many more search results you need to sift through to find what you are looking for! The descriptions of each database on the A-Z list gives you a snapshot of what those databases are searching.
Still not sure which database to use for your project or assignment or are struggling to find articles that are relevant?Ask a librarian! We can help you evaluate which resources would be best for your need!