Subject Guides: Music Dance Theatre (MDT): Research Help & Encyclopedias

Online Encyclopedias

Oxford Reference Online - Performing Arts This link opens in a new window Oxford Reference Online brings together language and subject reference works from one of the world's biggest reference publishers into a single cross-searchable resource. The Core Collection contains over 100 dictionary, language reference, and subject reference works published by Oxford University Press. It is a fully-indexed, cross-searchable database of these books, giving subscribers unprecedented access to a comprehensive information resource. Also includes access to Oxford Digital Reference, a collection of 17 ebooks covering The Renaissance, Dance, Global Change, The Reformation, Byzantium, Theatre and Performance, The Enlightenment, Economic History, Evolution, Ancient Egypt, Food and Drink in America, The Middle Ages, American Literature, Latinos and Latinas in the United States, British Literature, Linguistics, and Children's Literature.

MusRef: An Online Guide to Print and Internet Resources for Music and Dance MusRef is a site devoted to music and dance bibliography and reference. The site consists of five main features: An online bibliography of music and dance bibliographies and reference sources (both print and online), A blog devoted to music and dance bibliography and reference, Basic introductions to reference tools intended to help students understand how reference sources can guide them to appropriate research materials, Links to unpublished bibliographies, A corresponding Facebook page designed as a forum for interested librarians, scholars, and students. At present the bibliography includes more than 7,300 bibliographies and reference sources (both print and online), approximately 1,880 of which are annotated with critiques on use, coverage, organization, and pros and cons (click here for guidelines on writing critiques).

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free, collaboratively edited, and multilingual Internet encyclopedia supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 22 million articles (over 4 million in English alone) have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. This resource is great for gathering background information that will have to be independently substantiated using other sources. Wikipedia has the potential to be a fantastic starting point for research, but requires additional work on the part of the researcher to critically evaluate the accuracy, currency, and possible bias(es) of the information presented there.
World Biographical Information System (WBIS) Online WBIS Online is the most comprehensive biographical database available, providing short biographical information on 5.49 Million people from the 8th century B.C. to the present.
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Included are 7.2 Million digital facsimile articles from biographical reference works on 5.1 Million people worldwide.

Britannica Online This link opens in a new window Welcome to Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Use this powerful resource to search or browse for information in encyclopedias, magazines, videos, and Web sites.

Classical Music Reference Library Classical Music Reference Library brings together more than 30,000 pages of essential reference materials, spanning the entire history of Western classical music, in a unified online database.
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This release includes 26,774 essays and images from 22 sources, over 15,001 pages. Includes:

* Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, ed. by Nicholas Slonimsky
* Baker's Student Encyclopedia of Music, ed. by Laura Kuhn
* Women Composers, ed. by Martha Furman Schleifer
* The History of Classical Music, by Stuart A. Kallen
* The Instruments of Music, by Stuart A. Kallen
* The Liszt Companion, ed. by Ben Arnold
* Music since 1900, 6th ed., ed. by Laura Kuhn
* A Short History of Opera, by Donald Jay Grout
* The Sibelius Companion, ed. by Glenda Dawn Goss
African American Music Reference African American Music Reference will contain 50,000 pages that offers the first comprehensive coverage of blues, jazz, spirituals, civil rights songs, slave songs, minstrelsy, rhythm and blues, gospel, and other forms of black American musical expression
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This release includes 2,771 essays and images from 71 sources, over 19,188 pages.

Oxford Music Online This link opens in a new window Indexes the full text of the revised second edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, the authoritative encyclopedia for all aspects of music. Includes links to digital sound, images, and related sites. Updated quarterly and annually. We have 5 simultaneous users.