MUHI 4345 - Survey of Opera History : Find Books, Scores, Recordings

When you want to find books, CDs, records, videos, music scores, and the like, a library catalog is what you need. The library catalog can help you:

• Find out if the Library has a book you want, and where to get it
  
• Find out if the Library has the right issue of a journal you want
  
• Find out what is on reserve for your course and where it's located

When SMU doesn't own a book you need, you don't have to give up--you can often get a book from another institution using Interlibrary Loan. A great place to start for that is WorldCat.

If you need articles, don't look in the catalog! Use an index instead (see Find Articles).

When searching for scores and recordings, here are a few tips:

• Use the plural form of any genre (e.g., masses, sonatas, symphonies).
  
• Use search limits for Music Score, Sound Recording, or Videorecording, as applicable.
• When doing a keyword search, combine as many unique terms as possible--e.g., composer last name, genre, work number (e.g., BWV number for Bach's works)--in order to retrieve more concise results. If you search just for Bach as a composer, you will have an overwhelming number of results!
• If you don't seem to be getting the results you're looking for, play around with your terms a little and try again. And if you still don't get what you need, just ask a librarian for help!