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Music Journals: Home

A guide to finding and using articles in music journals

Subject Guide

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Marianne Kordas
Contact:
Room 110, Hamel Hall
269-471-3114

Types of Journals

  • A professional journal contains news and informational articles pertinent to a particular profession or trade.These journals use an in-house editorial process to control the quality of the articles included. 

 

  • A peer-reviewed journal is the term for a journal that uses a vigorous quality control process with multiple outside expert reviewers before the publication of an article.

 

Why Use Journal Articles?

Peer-reviewed and professional journals often contain the most up-to-date information on a particular subject, and are an important vehicle for scholarly and professional discussion of issues, discoveries, and best practices.

Andrews University and the James White Library offer access to over 300 music journal titles, both online and in print.

Search Strategy

There are two major types of searches: first, by keyword or subject, and second, by specific author name or title, often pulled from a citation found elsewhere, such as a book, other journal article, or encyclopedia.

Remember that many databases offer advanced searching features that allow you to limit your search by language, material type (book, journal, musical score), and date of publication.

Core Discovery Tools

For music-related reseach, the core access point to scholarly journals is RLIM (Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale). This is primarily an indexing database that will lead to to other resources, though it does contain some direct full-text content.

JSTOR offers broad indexing of resources in the humanities, including music. Originally containing digitized back issues of academic journals, it now also includes books and primary sources, and current issues of journals.

To see if we have access to a particular journal here at AU, consult Periodicals A-Z. You can search or browse by title, such as Early Music or American Music Teacher.

Getting an Article

Once you have found the citation or abstract for an article in RLIM or JSTOR, you can use the   

Journal Linker  Journal Linker  

and 360 Link 360 Link to Full Text  

icons to navigate to the article itself. 

Several options for aquiring the article are possible. The library may have older print issues, there may be full-text online access, or the article can be ordered through MelCat or ILL (Inter-library Loan). If the article does need to be ordered from another library, it is usually scanned and emailed to the requester as a PDF within a few days.

Tip:

Many journals are available both  in print and electronically (often with full-text PDF). Some journal titles, however, are only available in print, or only available in digital format. Often, access to a single journal title may be available through more than one database provider.