Research 101

Some of us at The Music Ed Advocate remember when research utilized card catalogs and microfiche, and “subject” searches were cripplingly painful and time consuming.  We are grateful to Bing Crosby and Ampex (see Who’s Who) for building the foundations of innovation that will make this process so easy for you.

The scope of our work is derived from scholarly articles, which reports cutting-edge research and development in every field, but is also the most inaccessible scholarship for non-academics (and often for academics).  Our material in The Library is chiefly sourced from scholarly journals; we’ve presented full citation for you to enable you to find the original articles for your own use, as well as brief summaries and vital quotes from the authors, all of which is permissible within copyright law.  The articles themselves can only be accessed through personal, library or academic subscriptions, which helps ensure protection of intellectual property for published scholars (and we are huge fans of protecting intellectual property).

Here’s how to find these articles for yourself:

Log on to www.jstor.org

Register for a free JSTOR (pronounced jay-store) account, which enables you to access three articles every two weeks for free.

Once logged-in, click “Advanced Search”

In the first window, type the author’s last name.  If we are searching Smithrim and Upitis’ “Learning through the Arts: Lessons of Engagement,” we would enter “Smithrim” in the window, and then click “Author” in the box to the right.

In the second window, type “Learning Arts” and click “Item Title” in the box to the right.  All you really need to do is grab one or two important words from the title, and you will be set.

Then click “Search,” and the article should be immediately available for access, download, and even printing.

It’s that easy.

While JSTOR is a great resource, it's chiefly an archival database.  To find more recent articles, you should also consider EBSCO Host and ProQuest.

If other articles are proving challenging to locate, explore the parameters a little.  If your search gave you too many articles, add more fields and use more words from the citation, such as key words from the name of the journal; if your search didn't work, use fewer words and search parameters.  When we conduct broad hunts for new articles to assess, we generally only search words like “music” and “education,” in separate windows, with the “Full-Text” buttons on the right side highlighted, in order to maximize the number of articles we access.  From there, we cull, redact, and assess …hence, The Library.

If you need more than three articles every two weeks, and are on a deadline, check your local public library’s homepage to see if they maintain a JSTOR subscription; this would provide you unfettered access to as many articles as you can muster.  And if you find other articles you think we should consider, send us the citation!  We always welcome more sources to add to our collection.

If your public library does not have a JSTOR subscription, you will need to visit a college or university library, which is highly likely to utilize JSTOR.  Talk to the Reference Librarian on staff; these folks are generally the kindest and most contemplatively insightful figures on any college campus.  They may be able to help you utilize the college’s system, unless the college requires users to be enrolled students or employees (it’s not the librarian’s fault!).

If your local school district subscribes, and you are a student, parent or employee of the district, all the better, and you should definitely consider yourself fortunate.

While most of these articles are available through JSTOR, a handful were culled from other databases, like Lexis-Nexis, PsycArticles, and others.  If the article you want is not on JSTOR, never underestimate the power of an old-fashioned Google search.

And don't forget...Defend Your Music.