The Basics

Music reference works generally attempt to summarize topics and/or assist in finding secondary literature. The purpose of these sources is to answer short questions, provide background information, and help you find other sources.

Strengths:

• Good starting points for research, particularly in unfamiliar topic areas
• Good sources for quick facts, contact information, or statistics (concise dictionaries, almanacs, music directories)
• Good for discovering new vocabularies (music dictionaries, thesauri, encyclopedias)
• Articles often written by experts in the field and of high scholarly quality

Considerations:

• Usually tools for finding more in-depth information sources, rather than being sources themselves.
• Normally are found in the library's reference section and cannot be checked out. (Some music reference sources are now available as full-text databases online and are accessible through the College network)

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