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Music 492 : Music on the Move

Intro

For your final project, you are asked to collect sources that will form the core literature to be incorporated into your final project. At least two of these sources must be scholarly (published in a book or peer-reviewed journal) and at least one scholarly source must foreground music. 

You will also generate an audio and/or video playlist to accompany your final research project. 

In this guide, you will find resources for doing ethnographic research, including discipline-specific databases, select books from the collection, and audio resources.

You will also find a guide to Chicago Humanities-style citation, including resources on how to correctly cite musical recordings and live performance. 

 

Pro Tips for Identifying Scholarly Secondary Sources

  1. Start with the information provided in tertiary sources!
  • Look up specific titles of books in Primo, or journal titles (not article titles) in Primo Journal Search.
  • Use the entries in subject encyclopedias to identify the academic fields interested in the topic; then identify the appropriate subject database(s) to search.
  • Use the vocabulary in the subject encyclopedia entries as search terms in databases.
  1. Mine the bibliographies and footnotes in other secondary sources. You may find one secondary source that is not quite right for your project; however, it may cite another scholarly source that would be just right!
  2. When searching Primo or a database, pay attention to the subject headings in your results. You can use the vocabulary or click to do a new search for that heading. You'll be surprised at what you discover this way! 
  3. Select the best sources, not just the most convenient sources. This may mean requesting a book from SUMMIT and/or an article from interlibrary loan, both of which take about two to five days to arrive.

General Database Search Tips

Try these strategies to become a better, more efficient searcher -- and help you find articles that you can actually use:

  • Build your search vocabulary -- keep a running list of key words, phrases, concepts, synonyms, and any related terms or ideas that you find.
  • Use advanced search features -- narrow your search with "AND," expand your search with "OR," or search in specified fields (i.e., author, title, publication, abstract).
  • Use search limits -- control the types of results you get (academic journals? language?) and how they are displayed (date? relevance?) so that you're only looking at results you can use.
  • Try multiple searches and evaluate -- try to figure out why you got the results you did, and adjust your search until you get closer to results you can use.
  • Use database descriptors -- once you find an article that looks good, see what descriptors or "subject headings" were assigned to it in the database. You can use these to search only for articles that have the same descriptors attached.