Introduction
This guide was created for Professor Carol Oja's class Literature and Arts B-85. American Musicals and American Culture (Spring 2008). It is intended to complement the Harvard Theatre Collection materials on the course site and to be a highly selective starter guide for Harvard Libraries electronic resources in Musical Theater. As with any type of research, there are many other print sources that should be consulted. Some resources are restricted to Harvard affiliates.
Orientation to Harvard Libraries
Useful sites:
- HOLLIS: Online catalog for all Harvard Libraries which allows you to search for and locate books, scores, serials and other materials.
Libraries on campus that hold music and performing arts materials:
- Loeb Music Library
- Lamont Library (Morse Music and Media)
- Houghton
Library (Harvard
Theatre Collection)
Library locations: Harvard University Library Map/Guide.
Library hours: Visit the Library Hours page of the Harvard College Library site.
Portals:
- Harvard College Library: Links to HOLLIS, information for students, faculty, and researchers.
- Harvard Libraries: Links to information about all Harvard Libraries, catalogs, digital programs and initiatives.
Please make use of Research Guides (library tutorials for locating subject pathfinders, course information, finding aids for HOLLIS and other research tools).
Online Resources for Music Scholars: Music Library Research Guide
The E-Research section of
the Harvard Libraries site links to a myriad of electronic resources, including
journals, indexes, and
dictionaries as well as features such as Cross
Search and My
Research (saved
searches, customization).
Finding Books and Scores in the HOLLIS Catalog
Expanded Search provides more powerful search options such as Language, Location, Date and Format limiters; also choice of "Anywhere" (keyword) search and "Subject words" search. Format is useful for restricting search to audio, books or scores, for example.
Sample List of Relevant Subject Headings (see hyper linked subjects in full records). Try keyword searches first, then click subject words to refine your search:
Musicals
Musicals -- Production and Direction
Musicals -- Scores
Musicals -- Stage Guides
Musicals -- 20th Century -- Stories, Plots, etc.
Kern, Jerome, 1885-1945. Show boat
Rodgers, Richard, 1902-1979. Oklahoma!
Blitzstein, Marc. Cradle will rock
More Tips:
- Put " "around words to search them as a phrase
- Use ? to truncate search words and search for variant endings: critic?
- You can go back and "refine" a search that gives you too many result by clicking on the Modify button.
- Ability to print/save/send search results to yourself
- When you find a relevant book in HOLLIS click on any Subject headings listed on the screen to find more books on that topic.
- Consult the Searching the HOLLIS Catalog guide.
Although you will find many materials in English and other languages in the HOLLIS catalog, it is also useful to search other large catalogs such as Worldcat (for North American libraries) and the Karlsruhe Virtual Catalog (KVK) (for European libraries). Books and materials that are not owned by the Harvard Libraries can be requested through HCL Interlibrary Loan.
Finding Reference and Biographical Information
Grove Music Online: Premiere music reference source, including biographical articles on composers, performers, genres, and library resources. Articles are written by experts on each topic and contain useful bibliographies and composer works lists and performance information in some cases (premieres).
Encyclopedia of Popular Music: Comprehensive reference work devoted to popular music, including musical theater. Features searching by genre and decade, discographies, and cross-references.
Popular figures will also be found in the "Online
Tools for General Reference" of Online
Resources for Music Scholars.
Finding Articles and Reviews in Periodicals
Purpose of periodical indexes: Library catalogs such as HOLLIS only index periodicals at the title level. Periodical indexes (full-text or abstract) allow the researcher to find individual articles on specific topics.
Paths to Finding E-Resources at Harvard:
Harvard Libraries Research Guide for Music: Online Resources for Music Scholars (includes interdisciplinary sources)
E-Research @ Harvard Libraries: Search for a resource by title in Find E-Resources (also Quick Search, Cross Search, and My Research). You can access these resources from any location using your Harvard ID and PIN.
Citation Linker: Allows you to search for an article if you already have partial citation information.
Find It @ Harvard: Inside databases, these links 
allow you to link directly from an article citation to HOLLIS and/or full text for the article.
Periodical Databases and Music Reference: List of the music periodical indexes that Loeb Music Library owns.
Key Resources:
International Index to the Performing
Arts
Indexes hundreds of scholarly and popular performing arts periodicals
covering dance, film, television, drama, theater, stagecraft, musical theater,
broadcast arts, opera, etc - now many in full text. Includes research articles
and reviews. Tip - use browse lists to select specific names, productions, or figures (more powerful than keyword).
International
Index to Music Periodicals (scholarly and reviews)
Music Index (strong on popular music, reviews)
RILM Abstracts of Music Literature: Scholarly articles, reviews, conference papers, essays, book chapters, dissertations and more.
Multidisciplinary Sources:
Arts and Humanities
Citation Index (scholarly articles and reviews)
Lexis-Nexis Academic (news and reviews from New York Times, major newspapers)
Select the News tab (default); in the "Select Sources" menu, choose "Book, Movie, Music, Play and Video Reviews"; change date default (set for previous 3 months).
Finding Internet Sources
Online Resources for Music Scholars - Music Information Meta-Sites: These gateway sites are created by experts in music librarianship and musicology, therefore sites included have been found to be credible and authoritative.
Finding Songs in Collections (HCL guide)
Music Sack: Biographical information including books, articles, people and theaters. Information can be dated and it is a non-academic site so do not rely solely on this resource but contains much useful information as a starting point.
Evaluating Web sites
As with print resources, evaluation and critical thinking are very important when using or citing internet sites. Evaluation criteria include:
- Currency of information
- Accuracy of information
- Authority or credibility of source (who produced or authored the site)
- Comprehensiveness, scope
- Quality of information, scholarly or otherwise
- Usefulness to topic
For more information: Guide to Evaluating Websites
Citing Sources
Citation Management Tools
Citing Electronic Resources
Walker, Janice R. The Columbia Guide to Online Style. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.
Widener Loker Reading Room RR 2117.45.10
Lamont Reference Room PN 171.F56 W35 1998
Online: a reference guide to using internet sources
From Bedford St Martin's, detailed advice for citing online sources. “Citation styles” gives links to descriptions of MLA, APA, Chicago and CBE styles as well as citation styles for WWW sites, e-mail messages, listservs, newsgroups, etc.