Music: Books

SUMMON searches:

• Print books at SU Libraries, including full-text indexing for titles also in Google Books
• Ebooks from various publisher collections
• Public domain digital book scans in HathiTrust Digital Library

Browsing books and choosing different keywords can be a good place to start when you are beginning research. Try some of the following strategies, or search using your own terms:

Form of music

• Symphony (for books), Symphonies (for scores & recordings)
• Concerto (for books), Concertos (for scores & recordings)

Genre of music

• Popular music
• Folk music

Name of instrument or instrument group

• Violin (for books), Violin music (for scores & recordings)
• Trombone
• Stringed instruments

Type of social or ethnic group, add ending of "music" or other form

• African Americans - Music
• Women - Music
• Shakers - Hymns

Books about people & places

• Berlioz, Hector
•  

Add other endings to get more specific

• Instruction and study
• History and criticism
• Methods (usually after instrument names)
• Country or geographic name (i.e. Folk songs - Europe)

WorldCat is a world catalog of libraries that participate in SU Libraries' inter-library loan network. Search here for books, scores and recordings in other libraries, and we will borrow it for you, free of charge.

Find something you like? Collect the citation and place an inter-library loan request. PDFs of articles usually arrive in 1-2 days, and books usually arrive in 5-8 business days.

• Use the advanced search and the same subject headings from the SU catalog.
• Be sure to limit by format (book, musical score, recording)
• If on-campus, look for the "Interlibrary Loan" link to transfer the citation directly to our ILL request form.

Each of these collections allows for full-text searching of all titles simultaneously: