Music 603: Graduate Music Education Project

Strengths:

• Search two of our large education databases at the same time. You'll get articles from the main music education journals, as well as occasionally from other education journals.
• The databases separate peer-reviewed journals from magazines, so you can limit to scholarly articles via the limiter Peer Reviewed or Academic Journals.

Weaknesses:

• While it does try to eliminate duplicates, it isn't always successful.
• To use the Subject tags the most effectively, you will need to chose to narrow to one database, either ERIC or Education Research Complete, as the subject terms occasionally are different. Scroll down to the last limiter on the left side, Database, and choose one. (ERIC includes ERIC Documents, which are miscellaneous papers, books, etc. that aren't from a journal or magazine. You won't find these in Education Research Complete, but they aren't scholarly articles.) 

Strengths:

• The most comprehensive database for music. Some journals go back to the early 19th century and covers around 2400 journals, as well as books, conference papers, and dissertations.

Weaknesses:

• The limiter Academic Journals does not guarantee it is a peer-reviewed journal article! All the periodical articles from both journals and magazines are tagged the same. Note the length of the article and read the abstract carefully. See How do I know If the article is scholarly? for more info.
• The Language limiter will still display articles where there is an English language abstract, even if the full article is in another language. The language of the title of the work will tell you if it is truly in English.

Strengths:

• Knows about millions of articles. Default is to show you only the ones we should have full text.
• Easiest way to search all of our databases at once.

Weaknesses:

• Can be frustrating when using the subject limiters on the left side to narrow the results.
• Unclear sometimes why a particular result appears, since the search terms are not in the record.

Mechanics:

• Use specific keywords, since the database is so large.
• Definitely limit to Peer-reviewed Journals on the left! (Gets rid of the magazines, but also the books. You ought to search for books and articles separately, because the subject tags are different for each format.)
• If you want to expand your results, click the Include results with no full text at the top left. You'll just have to interlibrary loan those articles.