Databases

• Academic Search Complete (approximately 1880s to date). Provides abstracts of articles (summaries), and full-text articles from more than 10,000 books, scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers, and reference works on a wide variety of topics.
• American Periodicals Series Online (1741 to 1900). Provides digitized images of more than 1,000 American magazines, journals, and newspapers.
• Arts & Humanities Search (1980 to date). Indexes more than 1,300 of the world's leading arts and humanities journals.
• FirstSearch databases. Provides access to dozens of indexes and databases in a variety of disciplines.
• Humanities Abstracts (1983 to date). Indexes a broad range of some 500 magazines and journal publications.
• Humanities & Social Sciences Index Retrospective: 1907-1984. Indexes nearly 1,200 periodicals in the social sciences and humanities.
• RILM Abstracts of Music Literature (1967 to date). An international index to writings on music, including works of criticism, musicology, ethnomusicology, instruments, pop and jazz, theory, performance, and related disciplines.  The database covers books, journals, conference proceedings, catalogues, dissertations, recordings, and reviews. 

Databases in Related DisciplinES

• America:  History and Life (1964 to date). An abstract database devoted to United States and Canadian history from earliest times to the present.
• Biography and Genealogy Master Index (coverage varies). An index to millions of biographical sketches in hundreds of reference books and other sources.
• Historical Abstracts (1955 to date). This abstract database covers all aspects of history (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450 to the present.
• LexisNexis Academic (coverage varies; mostly 1990s to date). Contains full-text articles from newspapers, magazines, legal and business sources, reference books, and other works.
• MasterFile Premier (coverage varies by publication). Furnishes full-text coverage of thousands of reference books, biographies, and primary source documents. Also contains an image collection.
• OmniFile Full Text, Mega Edition (1982 to date). A multidisciplinary database that provides the full text from a variety of the company's full-text databases, including Education, General Science, Humanities, Readers' Guide, Social Sciences, and Business. When available, the full text is included from these databases: Applied Science & Technology, Art, Biological & Agricultural Index, Index to Legal Periodicals & Books, and Library Literature & Information Science. Coverage dates: Indexing, 1982+; Abstracting, 1984+; select full text, 1994+ (start dates for full-text coverage vary from journal to journal within a database).
• Periodicals Index Online (formerly PCI) (1665 to 1995). Provides author, title, and keyword access to the table-of-contents pages of more than 4,000 worldwide periodicals.
• ProQuest Historical Newspapers (coverage varies). Provides full-text and full-image articles for the New York Times (1851 to within the last several years) and the Washington Post (1877 to 1991). Users can search the newspapers separately or together.

For a complete listing of databases provided by UMW Libraries, please see Databases A-Z.

selected reference books in simpson library

• General Works
• Biographical Works

general works

• American Musical Traditions REFB ML 3551 .A52 2002
• Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World REFB ML 102 .P66 C66 2003
• The Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre REFB ML 102 .M88 G3
• The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Rock History REFB ML 3534 .G754 2006
• Music in the 20th Century REFB ML 105 .M88 1999
• The Music Index REFB ML 118 .M84
• Music since 1900 REFB ML 197 .S634 2001
• The New Grove Dictionary of American Music REFB ML 101 .U6 N48 1986
• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians REFB ML 100 .N48 2001
• The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments REFB ML 102 .I5 N48 1985
• The New Grove Dictionary of Opera REFB ML 102 .O6 N5 1992
• Orchestral Music: A Handbook REFB ML 128 .O5 D3 2005
• The Oxford Companion to Music REFB ML 100 .O94 2002
• The Rock Song Index: The 7500 Most Important Songs of the Rock and Roll Era, 1944-2000 REFB ML 128 .R6 P65 2005
• Sourcebook for Research in Music REFB ML 113 .C68 2005

Biographical works

• Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians REFB ML 105 .B16
• Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Popular Musicians Since 1990 REFB ML 102 .P66 B35 2004
• Baker's Biographical Dictionary of 20th Century Classical Musicians REFB ML 105 .S612 1997
• Dictionary of American Classical Composers REFB ML 106 .U3 B87 2005
• The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music REFB ML 105 .H38
• International Dictionary of Black Composers REFB ML 105 .I5
• Latin American Classical Composers REFB ML 105 .F53
• The Unofficial Encyclopedia of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame REFB ML 105 .T3 1998
• Women and Music in America Since 1900 REFB ML 82 .W625
• Women Composers: Music Through the Ages REFB
• World Musicians REFB ML 385 .W67 1999

Websites

• Virtual Libraries
• Directories and Guides
• Dictionaries and Encyclopedias
• Lyrics and Song Indexes
• Organizations

Virtual libraries

Virtual libraries contain annotated collections of high-quality Internet resources that librarians or other information specialists have carefully selected. Users can usually browse by subject or search.

• American Memory from the Library of Congress: Performing Arts, Music. The Library of Congress's American Memory Project features collections of digitized primary sources and cultural documents. "Performing Arts, Music" is comprised of 31 collections of invaluable research material.
• Librarians' Internet Index. See especially the Music category under Arts and Humanities.
• The Internet Public Library. See especially the Music section of the Fine Arts category under Arts & Humanities. The sections of "Music" include:
  • Musicians & Composers
  • Opera
  • Performance

Directories and Guides

• The Classical Music Pages. This website "provides you almost everything you need concerning classical music--its history, biographical information about composers (with portraits and short sound examples), explanations of the various musical forms, and a dictionary of musical terminologies."
• Early Music Resources on the Web. Iowa State University's early music ensemble, Musica Antiqua compiled this directory of resources pertaining to music of the Renaissance and Middle Ages.
• Essentials of Music. This introduction to classical music features three sections: Eras, Composers, and a Glossary.
• Internet Public Library: Pathfinders: Composers. A guide prepared by librarians at the Internet Public Library. Includes Music History 102.
• Music Resources. A directory of websites arranged by broad subject headings.
• The Symphony: An Interactive Guide. A searchable, well-crafted introduction to "Western art music's richest and most important genre."

Dictionaries and Encyclopedias

• Dr. Estrella's Incredibly Abridged Dictionary of Composers. Provides "basic and accurate biographical information on more than 500 composers."
• Essentials of Music: Online Glossary. This section of Essentials of Music (see above) "will introduce you to the terms used most often to talk about music."
• An Incomplete List of Musical Terms. A glossary compiled by the Contra Costa College of Music Department in San Pablo, California.
• Instrument Encyclopedia. An online encyclopedia of musical instruments from around the world.

Lyrics and Song Indexes

• The California Library Systems Cooperative Song Index. Provides access to more than 180,000 song titles (mostly popular music) from more than 2,000 song books, magazines, and other collections.
• Archive of Popular American Music. Images of popular American sheet music from 1790 to the present.
• Librarians' Internet Index: Music: Lyrics. An annotated listing compiled by librarians at the Internet Public Library.
• The Lied and Art Song Texts Page. "An archive of 18,203 texts used in Lieder and other classical Art Songs."
• Lyrics World: A Collection of Lyrics Sites.
• Song Lyrics; Libretti. Developed and maintained by the Indiana University School of Music.

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.
• Internationale Stiftung Mozart. The purpose of the Digital Mozart Edition is to "make Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's musical compositions widely and conveniently accessible to the public."
• zZounds.com. A "musical instruments music store."