Music Library and Research Skills, and: A Guide to Library Research in Music (review)

The publication of two new books by highly-respected members of the music library profession would be good news at any time, but these books are particularly welcome just now. This is because nothing has truly superseded the exemplary Duckles as the essential book for teaching music research. Unfortunately, its most recent revision is now twelve years old (Vincent H. Duckles and Ida Reed, Music Reference and Research Materials: an Annotated Bibliography, 5th ed. [New York: Schirmer Books, 1997]), and vast changes due to computer technology, if nothing else, would render it outdated. Teachers of music research classes and students or scholars who are learning, honing, or updating research skills have an urgent need for excellent and current sources, and both of these new books fit those criteria.

In them Jane Gottlieb and Pauline Bayne both give masterful overviews of present-day serious music research. Gottlieb will endear herself to every music librarian by her impassioned insistence at the beginning of chapter 1 that music libraries and music librarians are essential to such research. Both authors astutely acknowledge the vital importance of online resources early on. Gottlieb engagingly points out in her preface (p. xi) that the ancient library of Alexandria was the model for the Internet’s Alexandria Digital Library and that Project Gutenberg honors Johannes Gutenberg, who launched the age of printing ( http://www.alexandria.ucsb.edu/ and http://www.gutenberg.org [both accessed 19 February 2009]).

Both authors skillfully cover the essential types of music research resources such as bibliographies, major dictionaries and encyclopedias, databases, and thematic catalogs. Neither attempts to replace Duckles by being comprehensive, but instead each cites what she considers to be particularly important sources in various categories. Their selections are well chosen.

While each book purports to be a textbook, each has a different focus. Gottlieb addresses intellectually-inclined advanced students and scholars who want more than a mere listing of resources and lessons in research, giving important historical background and in-depth detail about topics such as the publication history of the Grove dictionaries or the accomplishments of master researchers of particular types of music reference sources. A reader who is attuned to the world of serious scholarship, though perhaps not yet accomplished in it, can learn important principles of original research throughout the book.

By contrast, Bayne’s work is more overtly a textbook. Each chapter begins with a preview that defines the subject matter to come for a true beginner who may not yet know anything about research. To illustrate, she begins her chapter on thematic catalogs (p. 173) by defining what they are. Gottlieb, however, opens her chapter on the same subject (p. 246) with a summary of Barry S. Brook’s impressive accomplishments as a researcher of thematic catalogs. Bayne’s book has extensive material specifically designed to help students write papers. This includes pointers on picking and developing a topic, practical information on scholarly writing, and even writing examples. There are review questions and learning exercises at the end of each chapter. While some readers might find these distracting, classroom teachers might want to use them as written, or modify them to create learning exercises of their own.

Any librarian who helps patrons do advanced research in a music library will perceive the extensive music reference experience that guided each of these authors. Both provide information in abundance that reference librarians need to find quickly, practical advice they want to give, insight they want to offer, and citations for sources they want to recommend. For instance, Bayne has an appendix that outlines the Library of Congress M-class (pp. 217–21), which would help many would-be browsers. Her explanation of why we use journal indexes instead of library catalogs to look up articles...