Today’s blog is a list of my top 5 hubs for finding music research sources. By ‘hubs’, I mean both places (with a physical building), online platforms, as well as societies / groups of people.
My mentees/students have often asked about where to start finding sources, and how they can build up their bibliographies. It seems almost too old-fashion to suggest the traditional method of browsing along library shelves. In post- covid-19 pandemic, more and more resources are being made available online. With the growing network of sources, filtering is almost as important as finding. Thus, it is a good reminder to think always about what your key research enquiry is: what are your keywords? Jot these on your notepad, and let’s hit them through each of the search engine below.
The British Library was practically my second home throughout my doctoral studies. Supposedly, the library has every book that is published in the UK and the Republic of Ireland, and all foreign books sold in the UK, so the stock on secondary sources is plenty. In order to access the reading rooms, you have to be a member; and books have to be ordered in advance (ranging from an hour to 72 hours wait time). There is a general selection of reference books on open shelf in the Rare Books & Music reading room, and it is worth taking a look at these.
There are also great amount of primary source materials, however these are not always so easy to find: the library is always receiving donations, and a great deal of research is needed to catalogue and categorise these materials. I highlight three sub-sites that : 1) The archive collections; 2) The ‘News’ room, some newspapers are digitised; 3) The sound / recording collection. Personally, I did not use the latter two sites that much in my own research because I was on similar resources (for example, I used the British Periodicals available on ProQuest).
I downloaded a lot of journal articles from JSTOR. Some people find the number of results to be a little too overwhelming, and after a few articles there is very little relevance to the keyword searched. There are a few ways around it – narrowing of dates, inputting more keywords, sorting by genre. What I do like about it is the fact that it has in one place articles from multi- disciplines. Another alternative is Google Scholar, but articles are not always free. The disadvantage with JSTOR is that not all journal articles (particularly the latest releases) are available, but libraries will have these. Though, I do believe that it is important to pay subscription to use these sources (either as a personal contributor, or subscription to major resource sites as paid by the institution you are enrolled / work at).
As I used a number of treatises in my research (e.g. diaries of composers, pianists, instrument builders; archives of families, companies, and societies), I found this site to be OK useful. At current times, niche archival work is still very much a hands-on thing, and best to ask ‘connoisseurs’ (see point 5) where these are located. Besides using the British Library for archival collections, I have used the RCM Collections, RAM’s collections, Concert Programmes, Bibliothèque nationale de France to find sources that are semi-digitized. My doctoral research involved finding out about piano makers in the late 19th century, so I did a comprehensive search for any and all archives of piano firms, as well as archives of guilds, societies, piano trade. If you are interested to find out more about where to find these sources do get in touch or read my thesis.
In the past 20 years, recordings as a source is used more and more in PhD theses. CHARM is a very informative website: it has recordings as well as resources on how to conduct analysis on recordings. It is has an extensive collection of historic and modern record catalogues. As CHARM was an AHRC-funded project from 2004 to 2014, rumour has it that the website is going to shut down, and its contents will jump on board to another ship. There are other equivalents where one can find recordings, and I list here 3 as examples: British Library Sounds, as mentioned above; Library of Congress, which has almost 30,000 sound recordings: and historical recordings are part of 59 collection; and Stanford University SUPRA, whose focus is on the digitisation of piano rolls.
- Connoisseurs
Lastly, but most resourcefully, are ‘connoisseurs’, or experts in similar research fields. These include doctoral supervisors, librarian staff, museum collection curators, and scholars and musicians who ‘do what they do’. Many times it is through conversations with these people that you find out about rare collections. I have heard many stories about colleagues going to see collections that even the staff working in the institutions do not know about. I have also personally experienced stumbling across resources that became the center pieces of my writings and research. It can be a bit embarrassing to ask – but someone once said: ‘the worst thing that could happen is that you get a “no”, or “I don’t know”.’
What are your top 5 ‘hubs’ for resources? Feel free to add your comments below.
Joyce Tang 