Music, Culture and Community

Database

A collection of data (e.g., your contacts app on your phone). In library research, it is where you find articles from journals, magazines, and newspapers. Databases can be subject specific or interdisciplinary (e.g., Omni) and allow you to look for information about a subject across many sources.

RILM Abstracts of Music Literature

Index to music literature in various formats from around the world.

More Info

Scholarly book

Written by an expert - or experts - in the field and is intended for a specialized audience, and they use discipline specific methodology, terminology and theory to discuss and analyze original research. They are usually published by an academic press, e.g., Oxford University Press, Taylor & Francis, etc.

Tutorial: How to find scholarly books

Morgan-Ellis, E. M., & Norton, K. (2024). The Oxford handbook of community singing. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197612460.001.0001 

Scholarly journal

Scholarly publications published on a regular basis (e.g., each month) that focus on a specific discipline that contain articles (often peer-reviewed) written by researchers, professors, and other experts in a specific field that are intended for an academic audience, i.e., those that are doing research.

• Tutorial: What is a peer-reviewed journal?
• Tutorial: Identifying peer-reviewed journals

Peer-reviewed article

Piece of research that has been published by an academic working in a specific field and is evaluated by several researchers or subject specialist in the academic community prior to accepting it for publication. 

• Tutorial: Finding peer-reviewed articles

Mitchell, E. (2021). Performing Identities and Performing Relationships: Community Music Therapy and Adolescent Mental Health. Music Therapy Perspectives, 39(2), 195–203. https://doi.org/10.1093/mtp/miab004

Additional resource types

While academic research typically involves the use of books, book chapters, and peer-review articles, it is likely you will need to refer to other resources types. Knowing what you are looking for impacts the databases and resources you will use. Examples include:

• Audio files (including podcasts)
• Conference proceedings
• Government information
• Grey literature 
• Magazine articles
• newspaper articles (including editorials or letters to the editor)
• Primary sources
• Reference sources
• Videos

Use dictionaries, handbooks, guides, and manuals to quickly check information as you work on a particular topic. They provide a more comprehensive overview than an encyclopedia article, as well as useful lists of facts, formulae, and other important information. They are also the place to look for more practical, "how-to" information. For example, view Omni searches for ebooks on:

• Music Therapy dictionaries, guides, handbooks, and manuals

e.g., Edwards, J. (2016). The Oxford handbook of music therapy. Oxford University Press. http://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199639755.001.0001

• Community Music dictionaries, guides and handbooks, and manuals

e.g., Bartleet, B.-L., & Higgins, L. (2018). The Oxford handbook of community music. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190219505.001.0001

The Laurier Library has a large number of concise tutorials that can help improve your searching. Some introductory ones include:

• Creating a search strategy
• Using search words effectively
• Better searching using AND, OR, NOT
• Better searching using truncation
• Getting precise results: narrowing your search

Start with Omni

• Under resource type at left, filter to "Books and eBooks", e.g, "Music Therapy"
  • Tutorial: Using filters to limit results in Omni
  • Tutorial: Finding books in Omni
     
• Sign in to request from other Omni libraries
  • Tutorial: Requesting books from other libraries in Omni
     
• Use Scan on Demand for chapters or articles
  • Tutorial: How to use Scan on Demand

Instead of searching Music Therapy Journals individually, search a database that indexes them.

Start with Omni

• Limit to "Articles" and "Peer-reviewed journals"
• Tutorial: How to find and limit to scholarly articles in Omni
• Tutorial: Using filters to limit results in Omni

If you are having difficulty sifting through the results of an Omni search, you can also try these Music specific databases:

• RILM Abstracts of Music Literature
• Music Periodicals Database
• Consider other interdisciplinary subject databases that may be helpful depending on your topic:
  • CINAHL (nursing and allied health)
  • PsycINFO (psychotherapy, counseling)
  • ERIC (education)
  • SPORTDiscus (kinesiology)
  • Sociology Collection
  • Web of Science

The following sources provide examples you can use in designing your community music or community music therapy initiative.

Lenox, D. (2013). Music therapy program for adolescents at children are our future: A grant proposal. [Masters Thesis, California State University]; ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global (1417070119).

Rajan, R. S. (2016). Funding Music: Guidelines for Grant Writing in the Music Classroom. General Music Today, 30(1), 30–37. https://doi.org/10.1177/1048371316649641

Gitlin, L. N., & Lyons, K. J. (2014). Successful grant writing: strategies for health and human service professionals Springer.

For some guidance and examples of preparing a grant application, visit the Canada Council for the Arts.

• Tutorial: How to cite in APA style
• Tutorial: Getting citations from Omni records

The Laurier Library owns print copies of the APA Style Guide, but not the electronic version. However most information you will need to guide you for this class will be found on the APA Style guide website, or consulting the Purdue OWL site.

Remember that the APA Style Guide is more than just information on how to cite, it is also prescribes rules about how to write. Since in this class you are reviewing anti-oppressive principals, consider the APA guidelines:

• APA Bias Free Language Guidelines