Research Guides: MUSC 220: Medieval Music: Women, and Performance (HC): Journal Articles

Nuns Making Music

Four nuns sing from a liturgical book, with the choir mistress pointing out the words, Ämterbuch (Book of Offices), 1483, Germany.

Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, Ms 1548, fol. 39v (Source: Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, Public domain). More description in Feminae.

Searching for Articles

RILM Abstracts of Music Literature (Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale)
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Covers material published in music and various other fields as they relate to music. Records appear in over a hundred languages. The majority of citations include abstracts. Articles, books, bibliographies, catalogues, conference proceedings, discographies, dissertations, Festschriften, films, and videos are all covered by RILM. Concert reviews, recording notes, and pedagogical manuals if they are of scholarly interest.

Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index
Provides abstracts and/or citation information to journal articles, essays in books and book reviews about women, sexuality and gender in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, from 450 C.E. to 1500 C.E. Covers materials published since 1990. Open access database supported by the libraries at Haverford College and the University of Iowa.

International Medieval Bibliography Online
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Provides abstracts and citations to articles on medieval subjects in journals, Festschriften, conference proceedings, and collected essays. Covers all aspects of medieval studies within the period 450 to 1500 for Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.
JSTOR
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Provides full-text and page images from many of the top journals in most academic disciplines. Coverage is from the inception of the journal through three to five years ago.
ProQuest Music Database
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
This database, formerly known as "International Index to Music Periodicals" provides abstracts to music titles. Offers articles in full-text for over 80 periodicals. Covers all aspects of music including education, composition, theory and ethnomusicology. Covers 1874-present. Full-text begins in the mid-1990s-present.
Arts & Humanities Citation Index
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Citations to more than 1,300 arts and humanities journals and to relevant articles on arts and humanities in over 5,800 social science and science journals. Records include articles, bibliographies, editorials and reviews. Covers 1980-present.
ProQuest Research Library
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Provides citations and full-text magazine and journal articles in a wide variety of disciplines, both scholarly and popular in scope. Covers 1971-present.

Tracking Citations Forward in Time

Usually researchers find more sources by looking at the footnotes in an article or book, but these will always be older than the publication you have in hand.
Citation indexes like the Web of Science (which includes sections for the Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, and Science) are set up to search for sources cited in the footnotes of journal articles as soon as they become available.

This allows you to find newer articles which cite the books and articles you already know are key for your topic. By relying on connections between authors rather than subject words and by moving forward in time, citation searching can open up new avenues of research.

See this tutorial for more information on cited reference searching.

Web of Science Citation Databases
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
When you connect, choose the Cited References option to begin.
Enter the author's name: Last name first, First name initial only with asterisk (e.g., Smith J*)
Skip Cited Work box
Put the publication year in the Cited Year(s) box
On the next screen, sort the results by Cited Work, choose the relevant results and hit "See Results."
The results screen shows the newest articles first. Most records include a summary of contents, so that you can determine how relevant they may be for your research.
Use the search box and filters on the left to refine your results.
Note also the References link on the far right. It gives you an immediate view of the bibliographies from the Cited References you have just found.
Google Scholar
To search for cited references in Google Scholar, enter the title of the article or book in quotation marks.
In the results list, check the link Cited by [number] for both books and journal articles which cite the title you have entered. The Related Articles may also offer useful sources.
Results example:
[BOOK] Hildegard of Bingen and Musical Reception
J Bain - 2015 - books.google.com
Cited by 16 Related articles