Guide to Music Information Resources

The Library Catalog

Once in the library's online catalog, you can search for items in a number of ways, including author, title, subject and keyword. You may begin any of these searches from the "Quick Search" menu or you may choose the "Guided Search" option which will include examples of how to type your search. The library catalog has a web-based interface and so is accessible from ANY computer with a web browser. Simply click on Library Catalog from the library's home page.

Author searching
Type the name of the author, performing artist or composer-- last name first. Do not include punctuation.
    mozart                      heifetz
    mozart w                  heifetz j
    mozart wolfgang     heifetz jascha

Title searching
Type in as much of the title as you know, in the correct order.
    music for a summer evening
    music for a
Disregard a, an, the and their foreign equivalents when they are the first word.
   history of music rather than the history of music
Do not include punctuation.

Subject searching
You must type in a subject search exactly as it appears in the subject field. The subject field contains terms and phrases that the Library of Congress has assigned to books, etc. when they are first catalogued.
    music festivals                  music africa history and criticism
    piano methods                  music teachers   employment
    beethoven ludwig

Because subject searching is very precise, it is usually easier to search by keyword when first exploring a topic, until you get familiar with subject headings assigned to that topic. Once you find several records in the catalog that are relevant to your topic, you can easily do a subject search by clicking on any of the subject headings found at the bottom of the record.

KEYWORD searching

Keyword searching enables you to search for a single word or a combination of words. You may truncate your search and/or qualify fields to search.

Truncation. Allows you to retrieve plurals and variants of words following an asterisk:
histor* retrieves history, historic, historical, etc.

Adjacency Multiple words are automatically searched together as a phrase. For example, the keyword search, choral conducting will search for records in which those terms are found together, in that order, with no words in between.

Boolean operators Also known as Boolean "connectors," these allow you to refine your search by combining terms using Boolean logic. The operators are AND, OR and NOT.

OR Connects terms to retrieve every record in which either, both, or any one of the words appear, regardless of their position in the records. OR is usually used to combine like concepts, synonymous terms, or variant spellings and helps broaden your search.
ballads or folk songs or folksongs
religion or religious or sacred

AND Connects terms to retrieve every record in which all of the specified words appear, regardless of their position in the records. AND is usually used to combine unlike concepts and to narrow your results.
   music and therapy
    piano and technique

NOT Excludes any words following NOT in the search statements and retrieves records in which only the first term appears. Below are examples of how to type such a search in the catalog:

    classical and not jazz       liszt and not piano

(Note: The NOT operator should be used with caution as you might eliminate relevant results).

You may limit your results to specific fields after executing a search. Choose "Limit/Sort" and then select from the "WORDS IN. . ." menu, the field to which you want to limit a term.

Nesting enables you to make complex searches using a combination of Boolean operators and parentheses.
   (france or french) and composers
   (education or schools or curriculum) and music
    (ballads or folksongs or folk songs) and sound

    Remember to always put parentheses around the terms you are connecting with "OR" when doing a nested search.

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