SJSU Research Guides: Music: Home

Music at the King Library

This guide contains information and links to help you research music at the King Library.

Need more help? Contact me or check out the library's reference services.

A great source for biographies of composers and musicians, along with definitions of musical terms, styles, instruments, and more.

Oxford Music Online This link opens in a new window
Music research gateway that includes Grove Music, Oxford Dictionary of Music, Oxford Companion to Music. Authoritative online music dictionary/encyclopedia. Articles include biographies of composers and performers; definitions of terms, styles, and concepts; essays on world music, popular music, and jazz; descriptions of musical instruments and their makers, etc. Gives music examples and links to related web sites (some of which display images and play sounds).

Music & Performing Arts This link opens in a new window
Cross search interface for Alexander Street Press music and dance databases.
Naxos Music Library This link opens in a new window
Streaming audio including 253,000+ tracks from Naxos and other music labels. Primarily for classical music, but also includes jazz, world, folk, and other contemporary genres. Full-text content includes opera synopses, libretti, and composer and artist biographies. 5 simultaneous users
Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries This link opens in a new window
An online listening service and encyclopedia of the world’s musical and aural traditions with more than 35,000 tracks of music, spoken word, and natural and human-made sounds. Includes the published recordings of Smithsonian Folkways and the archival audio collections of Folkways Records and other labels. Also included is music recorded around the African continent for the International Library of African Music as well as material collected on the South Asian subcontinent from the Archive Research Centre for Ethnomusicology. Limited to 3 concurrent users

International Index to Music Periodicals (IIMP) This link opens in a new window
The Music Periodicals Database – formerly International Index to Music Periodicals supports music scholarship, theory, and practice with access to about 220 full-text titles and citations sourced from more than 600 music periodicals. IIMP Help Guide
Music Index Online This link opens in a new window
Index to international music and dance periodicals. Includes references to journal articles; reviews of books, recordings, and performances; also obituaries. Covers classical, popular, and world music and musicians; also dance.
RILM Abstracts of Music Literature This link opens in a new window
This resource covers musicology, ethnomusicology, theory, instruments, pedagogy, performance, dance, and all disciplines related to music from 1835 to present.