The Music Index

Welcome to The Music Index Database Information Screen! Browse the topics listed below to find what you are looking for:
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About the Database

The Music Index ..PP.The The Music Index, by Harmonie Park Press, is the single most comprehensive annual subject-author guide to music literature. Published since 1949, The Music Index contains surveyed data from more than 725 international music periodicals from over 40 countries in 23 languages. Topics concerned with every aspect of the classical and popular world of music are thoroughly categorized and organized according to the framework of an internal Subject List, which includes both Subject and Geographic headings. Covering all styles and genres of music, The Music Index duly cites book reviews, obituaries, new periodicals, and news and articles about music, musicians, and the music industry. The thoroughness of indexing and subject heading research, along with comprehensive coverage of the music field, makes The Music Index an invaluable resource for both the novice scholar and the experienced academician.

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Searching Tips

There are a number of helpful tips and hints you can use to improve your search results. For example, you can use Boolean operators to link search terms together; and/or limit the search to a specific title.

Boolean Operators

Sometimes a search can be overly general (results equal too many hits) or overly specific (results equal too few hits). To fine tune your search, you can use AND, OR, and NOT operators to link your search words together. These operators will help you narrow or broaden your search to better express the terms you are looking for and to retrieve the exact information you need quickly.

USING THE "AND" OPERATOR: If you have a search term that is too general, you can append several terms together using "AND". By stringing key terms together, you can further define your search and reduce the number of results. Note: Unless you define a specific search field, the result list will contain references where all your search terms are located in either the citation or full display.

• For example, type sax AND horn to find results that refer to both sax and horn.

USING THE "OR" OPERATOR: In order to broaden a search, you can link terms together by using the "OR" operator. By using "OR" to link your terms together you can find documents on many topics. Linked by this operator, your words are searched simultaneously and independently of each other.

• As an example, search sax OR horn OR jazz to find results that reference the terms "horn" and "sax", or the term "jazz".

USING THE "NOT" OPERATOR: In order to narrow a search, you can link words together by using the "NOT" operator. This operator will help you to filter out specific topics you do not wish included as part of your search.

  • Type: horn OR sax NOT jazz to find results that contain the terms "horn" or "sax" but not the term "jazz".
  • To further define your results, type: horn AND sax AND jazz to constrict the search to include all terms linked by the "AND" operator.

Grouping Terms Together Using Parentheses

Parentheses also may be used to control a search query. Without parentheses, a search is executed from left to right. Words that you enclose in parentheses are searched first. Why is this important? Parentheses allow you to control and define the way the search will be executed. The left phrase in parentheses is searched first; then based upon those results the second phrase in parentheses is searched.

Generalized Search: horn or sax and jazz or blues
Focused Search:(horn or sax) and (jazz or blues)

In the first example, the search will retrieve everything on horn or saxaphone jazz AS WELL AS everything on blues whether or not the articles refer to horn or saxaphone.

In the second example, we have used the parentheses to control our query to only find articles about jazz or blues that reference horn or saxaphone.

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Searchable Fields

The default fields for unqualified searches consist of the following: all authors, all subjects, all keywords, all title info (including source title) and all abstracts.

The following list will help you locate detailed information referenced in this database as a field.

Searchable tag   Description                                Example
  
AN              Accession Number                            AN MAH0001401964
                 [Phrase Indexed]
                 Performs an exact search for an article's
                 identification (accession) number.
  
AR              Author Phrase                               AR "Adilman, Sid"
                 [Phrase Indexed]                           AR "Adilman, S."
                 Performs an exact search for an article's
                 author, in the format of last name, first
                 name, and middle initial if available.
                 (In order to find articles where the
                 author's full first name was not given in
                 the byline, perform a second search using
                 the author's first initial.)
  
AU              Author                                      AU Adilman
                 [Word Indexed]
                 Performs a keyword search for an article's
                 author, in the format of last name, first
                 name, and middle initial if available.
  
CY              Country of Publication                      CY Austria
                 [Phrase Indexed]
                 Performs an exact search for the name of
                 the country the article was published in.
                 A complete list of available countries  is
                 available in the list-box limiter on the
                 Advanced Search screen.
  
DE              Subject Terms                               DE "Bach Choir (London)"
                 [Phrase Indexed]                               
                 Performs an exact search for subject
                 terms describing an article. This can be
                 a topical subject("Oboe - History"), a
                 person ("Bernstein, Leonard - Works"), the
                 name of a company ("Apple House Music") or
                 a musical group ("Pink Floyd").
                
                
DT              Date of Publication                         DT 20020301
                 [Date Indexed]
                 Performs an exact search for articles
                 published on a specific date, in the
                 format of CCYYMMDD.
  
ED              Entry Date                                  ED 20051117
                 [Number Indexed]
                 The date the record was entered into the
                 system, in CCYYMMDD format.
  
FT              Full Text Available                         FT Y
                 [Phrase Indexed]
                 Performs an exact search for the value
                 "Y" indicating that a record has full
                 text available.
  
IP              Issue                                       IP 4
                 [Phrase Indexed]
                 Performs an exact search for the issue
                 in which the article appears. This will
                 generally be a numeric value.
  
IS              ISSN                                        IS 0035791X
                 [Phrase Indexed]
                 Performs an exact search for a
                 publication's International Standard
                 Serial Number.
  
JN              Publication Name                            JN "Blues Access"
                 [Phrase Indexed]
                 Performs an exact search for the title
                 of the publication or journal in which
                 an article appears.
  
LA              Language                                    LA German
                 [Word Indexed]
                 Performs a keyword search for the
                 language in which an article was
                 published. (Some records have more than
                 one language field.) A complete list of
                 available languages is available in the
                 list-box limiter on the Advanced Search
                 screen.
  
PD              Physical Description                        PD Discography
                 [Word Indexed]
                 Performs a keyword search on special
                 features that are included in the article.
                 Possible choices include:
                      Abstract
                      Appendix
                      Bibliography
                      Biography
                      Chart
                      Diagram
                      Discography
                      Facsimile
                      Graph
                      Illustration
                      Map
                      Music
                      Notes
                      Photo Essay
                      Portrait
                      Score
                      Specifications
                      Table
                 An up-to-date list of all available
                 choices can be seen in the appropriate
                 Index Browse list.
  
PG              Number of Pages                             PG 19
                 [Number Indexed]                           PG > 5
                 Performs an exact numeric search for
                 an article's page length. This index
                 can also be used with a greater-than (>)
                 or less-than (<) symbol to indicate an
                 article longer or shorter than a given
                 page count.
  
PT              Publication Type                            PT Performance
                 [Phrase Indexed]
                 Performs an exact search for the type
                 of publication or type of article. 
                 Examples of publication type include:
                     Article
                     Conference Report
                     Dissertation
                     Non-Printed Materials
                     Obituary
                     Performance
                     Printed Material Review
                 A complete list of Publication Types can
                 be seen in the appropriate
                 Index Browse list.
  
PY              Publication Year                            PY 1992
                 [Number Indexed]
                 Performs an exact numeric search for the
                 year that the article was published, in
                 CCYY format.
  
SO              Publication Name                            SO Blues
                 [Word Indexed]
                 Performs a keyword search for the title
                 of the publication in which an article
                 appears.
  
SP              Start Page                                  SP 61
                 [Phrase Indexed]
                 Performs an exact search for an article's
                 start page.
  
SU              Subject Term or Journal Subset              SU Harp
                 [Word Indexed]
                 Performs a keyword search on both the
                 subject terms and the journal subset.
                 For more information on journal subsets,
                 see the TS tag below.
  
TI              Title                                       TI Retrospective
                 [Word Indexed]
                 Performs a keyword search for the title
                 of an article.
  
TS              Journal Subset                              TS Piano
                 [Phrase Indexed]
                 Performs an exact search on the journal
                 subset. The journal subsets are groupings
                 of publications based on their usual
                 content; examples include "Dance", 
                 "Opera", and "Ethnomusicology." A full 
                 list of Journal Subsets can be found in
                 the appropriate Index Browse list.
  
TX              All Text                                    TX "Gothic Rock"
                 [Word Indexed]
                 Performs a keyword search of all
                 the database's searchable fields.
  
UI              Unique Identifier                           UI MAH0001401964
                 [Phrase Indexed]
                 Performs an exact search for an article's
                 identification (accession) number.
  
VI              Volume                                      VI 2
                 [Phrase Indexed]
                 Performs an exact search for a
                 publication's volume number.
  

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Definition of Fields

The following table explains the contents of each field in a Music Index record's detailed display.

Field name          Description
  
Title               Title of the article.
  
Publication         Publication information related to the record. For 
Information          instance, this field might contain bibliographical 
                     information for a book being reviewed by the cited 
                     article.
  
Language            Language(s) in which the article was published.
  
Authors             Author(s) name in last name, first name format. 
  
Authors             Additional information about the authorship. For instance,
Information         an alternate form of the author's name, or the reviewer of
                    a dissertation.
  
Source              The source in which the article was published, its
                     volume number, the number of pages in the article,
                     and a description and number of illustrations found
                     in this article.
  
Publication Type    Indicates a record's document type, such as article,
                     conference reports, dissertation, non-printed material,
                     obituary, performance, or printed material review.
                     All Publication Types are displayed  in the appropriate
                     Index Browse list.
  
Country of          The country in which an article was originally published.
Publication
  
Journal Subset      Journal Subsets are groupings of publications based on
                     their usual content; examples include "Dance", "Opera",
                     and "Ethnomusicology." A full list of Journal Subsets
                     can be found  in the appropriate Index Browse list.
  
Physical            This section refers to special features the article has,
Description          such as a bibliography, charts, or illustrations. A
                     complete list of possible values can be seen  in the 
                     appropriate Browse list.
  
Notes               Miscellaneous information about the work. For example, it
                     may contain a subtitle that was too long for the Title
                     field.
  
Subject Terms       The specific article’s subject heading or headings
                     describing the record's content.
  
ISSN                International Standard Serial Number.
  
Accession Number    Unique number to identify the record.
  

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Index Browse

Index Browsing Index browsing allows the user to view all values that occur in specified fields in a database, along with corresponding hit counts. Access the index browse feature by clicking the green “Indexes” button on the upper portion of the “Advanced” search screen. Use the drop-down menu to choose an index to browse. Indexes can also be searched using tags. Since browsable indexes are phrase indexed, the exact form and spelling of terms as they appear in the database must be used in conjunction with the tags when entering a search manually. Indexes available for browsing in The Music Index database are listed below. Tags for all fields included in the index browse feature begin with “Z” (e.g. “ZA” for Author).

ZA        Author
ZP        Country of Publication
ZI        ISSN (without the dash)
ZS        Journal Subset
ZL        Language
ZJ        Publication Name
ZT        Publication Type
ZZ        Physical Description
ZU        Subject Terms
ZR        Year of Publication
  

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Copyright and Restrictions of Use

The Music Index database is made up of indexing, abstracts, and full text. The copyright of the abstracts and indexing is owned by EBSCO Publishing. This database is intended solely for the use of the individual patron of the licensing party.

Copyright of the full text is the property of the publisher of the original publication. Text may not be copied without express written permission except for the print or download capabilities of the retrieval software used to access it. This text is intended solely for the use of the individual user.

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