Library Guides: Music: Books

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University of Chicago Library Catalog

Find items in all campus libraries, including books, periodicals, sound recordings, videos, DVDs and more.

NUCat
Northwestern University Library

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U of C faculty, staff, and students may borrow directly from NWU library via a reciprocal borrowing agreement or use Interlibrary Loan to request books not owned by the U of C.

WorldCat (OCLC)
The national database for items from almost all U.S. academic, public, and special libraries.
The Basic Search in WorldCat often does not work well in finding music materials, especially scores and recordings. So, when the Basic Search window opens, click on the Advanced Search button to open the Advanced Search screen.

WorldCat is a database that allows researchers to search the combined catalogs of hundreds of libraries around the world. It contains more than 52 million records for books, journals, audiovisual materials and more. This source can help researchers find items, verify citations, and identify which libraries hold a particular title.

Library Catalog Advanced Search
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The "Advanced Keyword Search" is the preferred searching interface to look for unknown items. It is also the best search tool to locate music items in the library's collections, especially when needing to search by uniform title, publisher, subject/topic, or limit by format, year of publication, etc. The catalog searches holdings of all campus libraries.
UICCat
University of Illinois-Chicago

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U of C faculty, staff, and students may use Interlibrary Loan to request books not owned by the U of C. U of C faculty may borrow directly from UIC via a reciprocal borrowing agreement.

Center for Research Libraries Catalog
Center for Research Libraries

CRL is a consortium of North American academic and independent research libraries. Its shared collections include newspapers (foreign, domestic, and specialized), foreign doctoral dissertations, and other traditional materials. Use Interlibrary Loan to request materials from CRL. CRL is located on the south side of the U of C campus.

Print and Electronic Books

How Do I Find Books?
A valuable library guide to finding books in the University of Chicago libraries. Covers the use of the Library Catalog, browsing our book collections, finding books in libraries from other institutions, and interpreting call numbers.
How Do I Find E-Books
Explains why the Library Catalog is the best tool to find ebooks. Also offers links to several ebook databases containing ebooks the library has purchased.

RILM abstracts of music literature
In addition to indexing and creating abstracts for journal articles, RILM also indexes and supplies abstracts for print books and ebooks. RILM (Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale) covers all types of publications on music, including, along with journal articles, books and ebooks. Publications represented in RILM originate from 151 countries. Currently the database includes more than 500,000 abstracts from selected new publications in 214 languages.

The database covers musicology, ethnomusicology, theory, analysis, composition, instruments and voice, performance practice and notation, liturgy, dance, aesthetics, criticism, music therapy and education, and iconography.

Electronic Books

Finding E-Books

The easiest way to locate e-books available to the University of Chicago Library is using the Library Catalog. The Catalog provides access to the Library's subscription e-books, as well as e-books available from Google Book Search and the Hathi Trust. If a book is available online, a link or icon will appear in the record. Please note that our subscription e-books may require you to log in with your CNetID.

Search for E-Books Using the Library Catalog.

To initiate your search in the Library Catalog, enter your keywords in the search box. When the search results window opens, select E-Resource under Format. If this does not appear, click on "more" to see additional formats.

See also the Library's guide to How do I find e-books?

Library E-Book Readers

ebrary: Example Click on "Info" in the upper left corner for help in navigating the e-book.

NetLibrary: Example Viewed through EBSCOHost; click on "eBook FULL TEXT" in left column to view entire source.

Google Book Search

The Google Book Search is a project that will eventually scan millions of books from the collections of major research libraries.

Google Book Search provides full-text of out of copyright books (generally, books published before 1930) and "snippets" of books in copyright. You can limit your search to full-text only or search the complete collection.

Search Google Books - Basic

Search Google Books - Advanced

Subject Specialist

Scott Landvatter

Send Email

Contact:

Bibliographer for Music and Dance
Room 362 Regenstein Library
Phone: 1-773-702-8447

Subjects:Arts, Humanities, Music

Off-campus Access

Almost all Library databases can be accessed from off-campus. The easiest way to do this is to use links from the main Library website or this and other Subject Guides. You will then be prompted for your CNetID and password to authenticate yourself as an authorized user.

If you find sources through Google Scholar or other search engines, you may not automatically get access to Library resources. IT Services has created the ProxyIt bookmarklet for these situations.

Find out more on their website

Find It!

When searching various Library and online sources, the button, when present, can be used to locate an item in the Library Catalog, to gain access to the full-text of an article, or to send interlibrary loan orders for items that the Library does not own.

Purchase Requests

The Library welcomes suggestions for the acquisition of materials which support the University's teaching and research programs. For these suggestions and requests email the Music Bibliographer. You can also submit a request by using this form.