Music 190y 

The main purpose of the Music Library is to provide the resources you will need to complete your degree program successfully.

The 2 basic skills are:

• To be able to search for the items you need in the online catalog (WestCat) and evaluate your search results
•  To be able to locate and retrieve the item(s) from the shelves, cabinets, or other online resources

Click Westcat in the middle of the Music Library Homepage.

Fig. 1 WestCat Search Screen

There are 3 boxes in the search screen that you can use to focus your search.  In this example, it is set to search for a title, The Interactive Saxophone.  Click Search.

Fig. 2 Result Screen (Bibliographic Record)

The detailed information on this page helps confirm that this is the item you searched for.  Notice the call number and location information at the foot of the page.  Redo this search by selecting Author in the Search by: and entering ‘Vana, John’ in the Search for: box.  Click on the name at the top of the list.  It will bring up the same record as Fig. 2

Search by Author (Composer)

Fig. 3 Author Search (Virgil Thomson)

Enter the search as in Fig. 3 above.  Click the name at the top of the results list, which shows that the library owns 47 items by this author.  Fig. 4 shows items 4-6 from the list.  Note the far right column.  It indicates that No. 4 is a book, No. 5 is a recording, and No. 6 is a score (Thomson wrote books and music)

Fig.4

The information on this screen may be all you need to find the items in the Music Library.  Click on any of the live links for more detailed information about items in which you are interested.

If you were only interested in retrieving scores by Thomson, it is not possible to do so using the Author search.  Switch to the Any Word Anywhere option in the Search by: box

Fig. 5

The search in Fig. 5 gives 20 hits of music scores by Thomson (notice the quotation marks around his name).  You could also limit the search to books or recordings (check out all the options in the Quick Limit: box).

Any Word Anywhere searches can be more effective if you use operators (see the instruction box immediately below the search screen).

Try the following searches in the Search for: box and compare results:

1.      tone poems

2.      +tone +poems

3.      “tone poems”

Can you explain why the results vary?  In 1. you are relying on the software’s relevance functionality to provide you with results (the more √’s the better).  Adding the + sign before each word in 2. means that both words must be present somewhere in the record.  Placing the words in quotes means that the computer is searching for those words together (as a phrase).  Using these searches, experiment with options in the Quick Limit: box.

Tip: Place numbering systems for music in quotes, e.g.:

            +beethoven +“op. 67”

            +beethoven +symphonies +“no. 5”

Call Number Searches.

To be sure of a valid search, leave a space between each element of the call number.

Fig. 6

You do not need to use capital letters but you do need to insert the period before the first “Cutter” number, i.e. .s38.

For a more detailed tutorial click on:

WestCat for Musicians