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IB Music Musical Links Investigation: Databases

Header: Exploring Musical Links

DATABASE PASSWORDS
Keywords

Think about the keywords or search terms to try when researching your musical links topic in the Lee Library catalog & databases. Stay flexible - and try different combinations. 

Here are a few suggestions: 

  • Music
  • Music - History and criticism
  • World Music
  • Music Appreciation
  • Music AND country or region, example: Jazz AND South America
  • Name of musical genre: example, Baroque
  • Name of musician, example: Lady Gaga
  • Name of the piece of music (if well know), example: Beethoven's 5th Symphony
ADVANCED ONLINE SEARCHING TECHNIQUES

Quotation Marks: Notifies the computer to treat a phrase as one single word, rather than searching on each word individually.

  • “prisoner of war”

Boolean Operators:  AND, OR, NOT  Used to combine terms and therefore limit results.

  • Hamlet AND imagery         
  • “mental illness” OR “mental disorder”     
  • Communism NOT China       

Truncation: Searching different forms of a word.

  • ALL DATABASES: econom* 
    • finds economy, economic, economics, economical, etc.

Wildcard:  Taking into account UK spelling, plurals, unknown spelling, and other forms of the word.

  • ALL DATABASES:  ? replaces one character
    • defen?e  finds defense (American spelling)  and defence (UK spelling)
    • theat?? Finds theater and theatre

Nesting:  Using parentheses to combine different commands, telling the computer which order to complete them.

  • ALL DATABASES:
    • constitution AND (“death penalty” OR “capital punishment”)

Subject Headings: The controlled vocabulary every article and book is cataloged under.

  • Keyword:  bullying              
  • Subject Heading:  Adolescent Aggressiveness
    • *Use Subject Guide Search in Academic OneFile to narrow subject focus.