Simpson Library: Music: Internet Sources

Internet Sources

This page lists websites that may be useful for Music topics. Some of these websites contain sources you can cite, and some are just starting points (overviews) that give you clues to follow.

Basic Starting Points

Classical Net
Includes information on composers, lists of recommended books, reviews of recordings, and links to resources.
Dr. Estrella's Incredibly Abridged Dictionary of Composers
Provides "basic and accurate biographical information on more than 500 composers."
OnMusic Dictionary
An online dictionary of terms used in music.

Sheet Music, Lyrics, and Recordings

International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) / Petrucci Music Library
A large collection of music scores in the public domain.
Library of Congress: Notated Music
Search the entire collection of notated music at the Library of Congress.
The LiederNet Archive
"The LiederNet Archive is the world’s largest reference archive of texts and translations of art songs and choral works."
Music Treasures Consortium
"The Music Treasures Consortium provides online access to the world's most valued music manuscripts and print materials, held at the most renowned music archives, in order to further research and scholarship."
Musopen
A mostly-free collection of sheet music and recordings.
Neue Mozart-Ausgabe: Digitized Version
The purpose of the Digital Mozart Edition is to "make Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's musical compositions widely and conveniently accessible to the public."
Songs of America (Library of Congress)
Explores America's history through songs. Includes sheet music, essays, maps, and recordings.

Organizations

American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP)
An association of more than 240,000 U.S. composers, lyricists, songwriters, and music publishers. Its database provides detailed information on song titles, composers, artists, and publishers of works in the ASCAP repertory.
BMI: Broadcast Music, Inc.
Developed and maintained by BMI, a non-profit organization representing more than 300,000 songwriters, composers, and music publishers. Repertoire, its database of some 6.5 million song titles, is searchable by artist, title, publisher, or writer.

The CRAAP Test

Use the CRAAP Test to judge whether you should cite a given source:

Currency: How recently was this site updated?
Relevance: Is this relevant to my topic? Is it relevant to my level (college vs. layperson)?
Authority: Does it come from an expert? What credentials does the author have? What do other sites say about this site?
Accuracy: Does it cite its sources? Is it free of obvious errors?
Purpose: Why was this site created? What is the author's bias? Again, what do other sites say about this site?

Reference Librarian

Peter Catlin

he/him

Email Me

Subjects: Art and Art History, Historic Preservation, History and American Studies, Music

Google Tricks

Tips and tricks for Google searches

Use quotation marks for exact words or phrases.

For example, “global warming” (to search global warming as a phrase rather than two separate words).

Use OR to search for one word or the other. Google will find pages that match either of the two words.

Example: attorneys OR lawyers

Use site: to search within a site or domain (no space after colon).

Example: “global warming” site:nytimes.com
Example: climatology site:.gov

Use a minus sign (a hyphen) to exclude a word or phrase from a search.

Example: jaguar speed -car;
Example: “global warming” -site:wikipedia.org

Use allintitle: to show results with word(s) in the title (no space after colon).

Example: allintitle:“global warming”
You can also use allinurl to find pages that have your search terms in their URLs.

Use related: to search for sites similar to ones you know (no space after colon).

Example: related:nbc.com

Use link: to find sites linked to a particular web page (no space after colon).

Example: link:freelancestar.com
Example: link:pbs.org

Use filetype: to restrict results to certain file type (no space after colon).

Example: climatology filetype:pdf

Use two periods without spaces to search for a number range, such as dates, prices, and measurements.

Example: “test scores” 2013..2014
Example: microwaves $100..$300

You can also use a Google Advanced Search to construct your search.