Biography and Context
Find books, book chapters, and scholarly journal articles that discuss the development and history of genres such as rap or grunge.
- St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture
Includes short essays on popular bands and genres such as grunge, goth and gangsta rap.
- Oxford Companion to Music
- The library's catalog
Books and book chapters in the Library's print collection are an important source of critical literature. The Library's catalog has a number of different search options: keyword and subject searches are good starting points when first exploring a topic. Search results can be narrowed with facets, which appear to the right of the results. Topic, region, era, and language are helpful facets.
Click here for a list of new contemporary popular music titles in the library's collection. Please note, that some of the titles will be on course reserve and have to be requested at the front desk.
subject search: "popular music" and "history and criticism"
subject search: rap
subject search: "hip-hop"
subject search: "rock music"
subject search: "country music"
Books that are not owned by the Library can be found via WorldCat. WorldCat is an online catalog that includes the collections of most U.S. libraries as well as a large number of libraries abroad. Titles owned by Falvey Memorial Library are tagged, those not held by Falvey can be requested through interlibrary loan with the Borrow from another library link. WorldCat uses the same Library of Congress subject headings as the Library's catalog.
- E-Z Borrow and Interlibrary Loan
Interlibrary loan is available for books and journals that are not owned by Falvey. EZ-Borrow is generally faster than interlibrary loan, since the books come from a local library network. EZ-Borrow can also be used for books that the Library owns, but which are currently unavailable.
- Academic OneFile
Includes scholarly as well as popular content. Start with a subject search, scan the resulting subject terms and take a closer look at the subdivisions (click on the + sign) of appropriate subjects such as Punk Rock Music. Analysis, criticism and interpretation, political or social aspects are generally good choices for scholarly content. The peer-review box on the results screen limits the search results to scholarly journals. Use FindIt to link to the Library's subscriptions if the full-text is not available in Academic OneFile.
- Humanities Full Text
Start with a basic keyword search and narrow results by suggested topics on the left side of the results screen. Click on the peer-review tab above the results to limit to scholarly content. Use FindIt to link to the Library's subscriptions if the full-text is not available in Humanities Full Text.
- Essay & General Literature Index
Indexes essays and book chapters.
- Communication & Mass Media Complete
Indexes communications and mass media studies journals.
- MLA International Bibliography
Indexes scholarly journals in the fields of literature, language, linguistics, and folklore.
- RILM Abstracts of Music Literature
An international database of music scholarship covering all areas of music including interdisciplinary studies of music, dance and music therapy. The database indexes articles, books, bibliographies, films and videos, and book, record and concert reviews.
- Sociological Abstracts
Indexes the contents of sociology journals.
This is only a small selection of indexes to scholarly journals available in the Library. Ask for further suggestions if you would like to find more indexes.
Research and Documentation Online.
An online guide to the major documentation styles.