Librarian's Corner
Pick two or three key terms that are essential to your topic and enter into advanced search.
Try different phrases,various versions of the term, or less key terms if your search is unsuccessful.
Boolean terms <and, not, or> help to define and focus your search, resulting in targeted academic articles on your topic.
Be patient! It might take multiple attempts to find relevant articles.
Useful Tips
Databases identify and locate articles published in magazines, journals and newspapers. Many databases also index essays, book chapters and monographs.
- Tip 1: Some of the databases provide full-text coverage of journals.
- Tip 2: If the database does not provide full-text, use Get it! Cornell or search the library catalog for the journal title (or book title). This will provide you with Cornell's holdings of the journal (in both print and electronic form).
- Tip 3: For more precise searching use the advance search feature of the chosen database.
Scholar Example
I am interested in investigating how musical improvisation can inform us in how we
perceive, interpret, and interact with different cultures. I draw this question largely from Vijay
Iyer’s “Improvisation, Temporality, and Embodied Experience,”1 where he considers ideas of
cognition as embodied interaction and improvisational music as a quintessentially experiential
process within the contexts of African-American and non-Western musical forms.2 Similarly, I
want to draw from musical examples across history both within the African diaspora and the
Borderlands.
Database- Music Index
Search terms- Improvisation & Music & Jazz
Improvisation & Music & Jazz
Improvisation & Music & Hip-Hop
Improvisation & Music & Western Culture
Selected Databases
Multi-disclipinary:
- Academic Search PremierThis multi-disciplinary database provides full text for more than 8,500 journals, including full text for more than 4,600 peer-reviewed titles. PDF backfiles to 1975 or further are available for well over one hundred journals, and searchable cited references are provided for more than 1,000 titles.
- ProQuest Research LibraryProQuest Research Library, formerly known as Periodical Abstracts, is a comprehensive database available through the ProQuest online system. It indexes and abstracts general interest magazines and scholarly journals in the social sciences, humanities and sciences. It comprises two components: a core list of periodicals covering about 800 publications, and 15 subject-specific modules that supplement the core list. Modules cover arts, business, children, education, general interest, health, humanities, international studies, law, military, multicultural studies, psychology, sciences, social sciences, and women's interests. Full text of many articles is provided.
- JSTORJSTOR is a fully-searchable database containing the back issues of several hundred scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, mathematics, music, ecology and botany, business, and other fields. It includes the following collections: Arts & sciences I, II and III, General science, Ecology and botany, Business, Language and literature.
Africana Specific:
- Africa-WideAn index covering material on Africa from the 19th century to the present.
- Black Studies CenterBlack Studies Center combines invaluable resources for research and teaching in Black studies: Schomburg studies on the Black experience, International index of Black periodicals (IIBP), The Chicago defender, ProQuest dissertations for Black studies, and Black literature index. This fully cross-searchable gateway to Black studies includes scholarly essays, recent periodicals, historical newspaper articles, and much more.
- Ethnic NewsWatchEthnic NewsWatch is a full-text collection of the newspapers, magazines and journals of the ethnic, minority and native press from 1960.
Newspapers:
- Nexis UniProvides access to full text resources on topics including current and general news; business and financial information; newspapers; company directories; government and politics; medical and health topics; accounting, auditing, and tax; federal and state laws; legal cases; and regulations. Resources include TV and radio news transcripts.
- ProQuest Historical NewspapersThis database offers full-text and full-image articles for newspapers dating back to the 19th century. For most titles, the collection includes digital reproductions of every page from every issue, cover to cover, in downloadable PDF files. The database is an ongoing project.
- Library PressDisplayLibrary PressDisplay provides online access for the last 90 days to over 6,000 newspapers from more than 100 countries, displayed in their original format and accessible by country, language, or title.
Primary Sources:
- Gale- Making of the Modern WorldThe Making of the Modern World is an extraordinary series which covers the history of Western trade, encompassing the coal, iron, and steel industries, the railway industry, the cotton industry, banking and finance, and the emergence of the modern corporation. It is also strong in the rise of the modern labor movement, the evolving status of slavery, the condition and making of the working class, colonization, the Atlantic world, Latin American/Caribbean studies, social history, gender, and the economic theories that championed and challenged capitalism in the nineteenth century. In addition, the archive offers resources on the role...
Music Specific:
- The Music index onlineBibliographic database covering more than 725 international music periodicals from over 40 countries in 23 languages. Topics include every aspect of the classical and popular world of music, and are thoroughly categorized and organized according to the framework of an internal Subject List, which includes both Subject and Geographic headings. Covers all styles and genres of music. Cites book reviews, obituaries, new periodicals, and news and articles about music, musicians, and the music industry. Selected coverage before 1973. Coverage: 1973 to present.
- Music Online: Contemporary World MusicProvides streaming access to world music, with a focus on contemporary genres such as reggae, worldbeat, neo-traditional, world fusion, Balkanic jazz, African film, Bollywood, Arab swing, and jazz. Traditional world music is also included--Indian classical, fado, flamenco, klezmer, zydeco, gospel, and gagaku. This is an essential resource for musicology, ethnomusicology, anthropology, folklore, and performance studies, with relevancy to a wider range of studies including world history, sociology and multi-cultural studies.
- Music Online: Jazz Music LibraryJazz Music Library is a collection of jazz recordings which covers thousands of artists, ensembles, albums, and genres, from all over the world, from the beginnings of jazz to today. It's an essential resource for the study and teaching of jazz history, performance, theory, or appreciation.
- Naxos Music Library :Jazz"Naxos Music Library is the most comprehensive collection of classical music available online. It includes the complete Naxos, Marco Polo and Da Capo catalogues of over 75,000 tracks, including Classical music, Historical recordings, Jazz, World, Folk and Chinese music. Whilst listening, users can read notes on the works being played as well as biographical information on composers or artists in Naxos's extensive database"--FAQ page.
- RILM Abstracts of Music LiteratureExtensive collection of bibliographic records and abstracts focused on music reference and other music related fields. Offers international coverage of books, bibliographies, conference proceedings, catalogs, discographies, dissertations, ethnographic recordings, Festschriften, films, iconographies, and videos. Includes both the traditional RILM database from 1967 to the present and the RILM Retrospective database for materials published prior to 1967.
- Smithsonian Global Sound for LibrariesSmithsonian Global Sound for Libraries includes the published recordings owned by the non-profit Smithsonian Folkways Recordings label and the archival audio collections of the legendary Folkways Records, Cook, Dyer-Bennet, Fast Folk, Monitor, Paredon and other labels. It also includes music recorded around the African continent by Dr. Hugh Tracey for the International Library of African Music (ILAM) at Rhodes University as well as material collected by recordists on the South Asian subcontinent from the Archive Research Centre for Ethnomusicology (ARCE), sponsored by the American Institute for Indian Studies, and the UNESCO Collection of Traditional Music, which contains recordings from more than 70 nations. Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries is a joint venture with Smithsonian Global Sound®, an international network of music audio archives and an educational resource that delivers the world's diverse cultural expressions via digital media.