Music
Library Research Guide
Using the Search Tools
Find Books at K-State Libraries
- From the Library homepage click on “Search It Advanced.”
- Above the search boxes select "K-State Libraries Only."
- Change Material Type from "All items" to "Books."
- Using the search boxes and pull-down menu categories, try different combinations of keywords. For example:
- Bartok AND Chamber Music
- Kansas City AND Jazz
- Schoenberg AND Lieder
Note that Search It offers useful filters for your results — located on the left side of the results page.
Find Books (and more!) Beyond K-State Libraries
Search It has some awareness of items available in other libraries. If you limit your Material Type to Books, but search the Books, articles + more tab, then you will find some books not owned by K-State Libraries. The library can try to get these for you for free by borrowing from another library.
- Interlibrary Loan HomepageMake loan requests and log in to your interlibrary loan account, which is separate from your K-State library account.
- Search WorldCatInformation about books, scores, sound recordings, serials, videos, and other items cataloged by OCLC member institutions including K-State. Contains more than 57 million records with bibliographic information and regarding which libraries hold the item in question. If K-State does not own the item you need, click the purple Get It button in the item record to request it through Interlibrary Loan.
Subject Headings
Subject headings are controlled vocabulary used to organize books and journal articles into pre-defined themes or subjects. They provide a focused alternative to keyword searching.
Any (keyword) search contains jazz --> over 1 million results
Subject search contains jazz --> over 200,000 results
Subject search is exact Jazz -- History and criticism --> around 500 results
Find a book's subject headings by clicking on the "Details" tab.
Try these subject headings in Search It:
- Music History subject in Search ItBooks will have ML call numbers.
- Music 18th century subject in Search ItBooks will have ML call numbers.
- Music Theory subject in Search ItBooks will have MT call numbers.
- Music Instruction and Study subject in Search It.Books will have MT call numbers.
