Research Methods in Community Music

• Resources for Graduate Students
• Locate books (physical items)
• Scan on Demand
• Mail on Demand
• Physical item pickup (Books to go)
• Request from other libraries (Interlibrary loan)
• Developing a research question (6:33 video tutorial)
• Planning a literature review (5:09 video tutorial)

Remember, when accessing Library resources from off-campus, you should go through the Library's website to ensure you are authenticated.

Omni is the search tool for the Laurier Library’s print and other collections and a subset of our electronic resources. It also contains the print and circulating collections of 18 other Ontario university libraries, which can be requested by Laurier community members for delivery.

• Omni FAQ
• Omni tutorials

In general, after you search Omni, you can use the facets on the left to filter your results. Some common filters include:

• Books and eBooks
• Articles
• Peer-reviewed journals
• Publication date

eBooks

Most the Library's eBooks are catalogued in Omni. However an Omni search will only retrieve eBooks if your search words are in the catalogue record (author, title, subject, abstract, etc.), and NOT the full text. It can sometimes be helpful to search the full text of an eBook collection, particular for more obscure topics. The Library subscribes to eBooks through a large number of eBook collections, so you cannot search all our eBooks at once. However the following two sources are good places to start:

Books not in Omni

While a large percentage of the book titles you might want are likely owned by an Omni library, you may also want to search beyond Omni to see what items you can request through Interlibrary loan.

Journal articles

Mitchell, E. (2019). Community music therapy and participatory performance: Case study of a coffee house. Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy, 19(1). https://doi.org/10.15845/voices.v19i1.2701

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 

Book chapters

Bishop, S. (2024). The Voices of hope: A Traveling miracle. In The Oxford Handbook of Community Singing. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197612460.013.31 

Conference proceedings

Calefato, F., Iaffaldano, G., & Lanubile, F. (2018). Collaboration success factors in an online music community. Proceedings of the 2018 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work, 61–70. https://doi.org/10.1145/3148330.3148346

Reference sources

David Horn, H., John Shepherd, S., Heidi Feldman, F., & Gabrielle Kielich, K. (2019). Bloomsbury encyclopedia of popular music of the world. (Sub-Saharan Africa) (Vol. 12). Bloomsbury Academic.

Magazine articles

A choir that creates community. (2013). Canadian Mennonite (Vol. 17, Number 22, pp. 33.). Mennonite Publishing Service.

Primary sources

Haleem, A.  (2015). The Qurʼan. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Videos

Williams, Jeni. (2022). Citizens of the world singing against oppression in Liverpool. The Open University. https://doi.org/10.21954/ou.rd.15070236 

Newspaper articles

Breaux, A. (2018). Prison choir to make its debut in NYC opera. USA Today (Arlington, Va.), 06.

Letters to the editor

Letter to the editor. "Religion Shouldn't be Forced on Students." Nanaimo News Bulletin, Dec 12, 2019.

Editorials

Milloy, John. "Religion can Help Bring Us Together." Waterloo Region Record, A9. May 03, 2023.

Dissertations or theses

Hirner, S. J. (2024). (Trans)itioning voices: Gender expansive vocal pedagogy and inclusive methodologies for choral directors and teachers of singing (PhD, University of Southern California). No. 31332782. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I.

Grey literature

Black, V. (2024). AI Job Displacement: Perspectives on the Future of Work From Beneath the Silicon Ceiling. Somatmosphere. https://somatosphere.net/ai-job-displacement-perspectives-on-the-future-of-work-from-beneath-the-silicon-ceiling

Immigration Partnership of Waterloo Region (2021). Waterloo Region Immigrant Survey Summary Report. https://www.immigrationwaterlooregion.ca/en/business-opportunities/resources/Resources--Publications/2021-Immigrant-Survey-Summary-Report.pdf

Podcasts

Terry, A. (Host). (2023, August 2). Discovering The Well-Being Benefits of Community Choirs with Sarah Summers (No. 122) [Audio podcast episode]. In Singing Teachers Talk. Bast Training. https://www.basttraining.com/ep-122-discovering-the-well-being-benefits-of-community-choirs-with-sarah-summers

A library database is an online searchable collection of information, often in the form of references to articles, books, and book chapters (but also newspaper articles, thesis, music, etc). Consider how the author of this thesis utilizes databases and search techniques, as described on pages 23ff.

Dissertation

McDonel, J. S. (2013). Exploring the relationship between music learning and mathematics learning in an interdisciplinary pre-K curriculum (PhD, University at Buffalo, State University of New York). 

1. Consider word variations and synonyms
   • think about how others might refer to your ideas
   • e.g, child death, perinatal death, neonatal death, stillbirth, sudden infant death, etc.

2. Employ search limiters (available limiters depend on the database)
   • peer reviewed, article type, date, language, etc.
3. Identify key publications and authors
   • note citations, and cited references, repeated author names
4. Document and track everything you do in the steps above

Omni is a large index, but it does not contain everything, so it is important to duplicate your searches across other subject databases. Research in Community Music is likely to be of an interdisciplinary nature. Here are some examples of databases you could search. Note: if you already know the title of an article, you can search for it in Omni (tutorial: Finding an article when you only know the title)

___________________________________________________________________________________

• Connecting to Library resources in Google Scholar

The Library subscribes to a wide variety of Canadian, US, and international news sources, both current and archival. More information.

Dissertations and theses may be considered scholarly sources since they are closely supervised by a dissertation committee made up of scholars, are directed at an academic audience, are extensively researched, follow research methodology, and are cited in other scholarly work. However, dissertations are still considered student work and are not peer-reviewed. They often contain extensive bibliographies.

Grey Literature is any literature that has not been published through traditional means, and is often excluded from large databases and other mainstream sources. It includes reports, policy briefs and reports, major research papers, white papers, working papers, government documents, speeches, etc. Grey literature can also mean literature that is hard to find or has inconsistent or missing bibliographic information. 

There is no single database that covers grey literature well, so Google is helpful in cases like this. Consider the following tips when searching Google, often using these in combination:

• limit to domain
  • site:ca, site:edu
• limit to document type
  • filetype:pdf, filetype:pptx
• think how a document might phrase something, enclose that in quotes
  • e.g., toronto music "community programming" filetype:pdf

Available through Laurier Library

Canadian Institutional Repositories (IR)

Just like Laurier's own Scholars Commons IR, most Canadian universities have their own IR, where in addition to theses they will place faculty and institutional publications. There is no tool that easily searches all IR at once, so you need to search individually.

Here are some additional sites that might be most helpful to you for this class:

• The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
  • Institute concerned with issues of social, economic and environmental justice.
• Canadian Council on Social Development
  • Connecting not-for-profit, philanthropic, government and business organizations.
• Canadian Think Tanks (McGill University)
  • A-Z list of Canadian Think Tanks.
• The Council of Canadians
  • A social action organization.
• Institute for Social Research (York University)
  • Houses the largest university-based survey research centre in Canada.

Listen Notes

Freely available podcast search engine.

The Laurier Library owns print copies of the APA Style Guide, but not the electronic version. Most information you will need to guide you for this class will be found on the APA Style guide website.

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

Citation Management

Zotero is a free citation management tool helps you organize all all references in one place. More information.