Essay? Giving you a Headache?!
If you’re looking for material for an essay, the first place you’ll think of is the library catalogue. Some topics just seem tricky to search for! Read the question carefully and rephrase it for yourself. Turn it round and examine what you're actually being asked for. Then ask yourself how you're going to answer the question!
Here are some professional searching tips to give you a better chance:-
GO PRO!
- Search everything! Don’t forget that the Catalogue Plus option searches all our electronic resources as well as all the books that we have in the library. Before you start searching, check the Catalogue Plus button.
- Use the tricks of the trade. You need to be a bit canny to find the best stuff. For example, a Catalogue Plus search like this is a good start: "Collaborative improvisation" AND jazz - using "quotation marks" keeps the words together in your search, and using the AND in block capitals tells the search that this phrase AND the word jazz must be in any results that it retrieves. These techniques help with any kind of essay, jazz or classical, teaching or traditional music.
- Go Advanced. You can refine your search even more after that, by using the Advanced Search function. It lets you eliminate resources that you don’t want to search, and makes your results more useful. (For example, results found in RILM are often only summaries, not entire articles or books. So you can choose not to search in RILM.)
- If you find Catalogue Plus a bit mind-boggling, go to the catalogue home page and click on the link on the right-hand side for E-Resources. Our e-resources include Oxford Music Online and JSTOR, and they'll both have lots of info to help you.
- Do come and see us in the library if you need help. Once you’ve tried a few times, you’ll soon get the hang of it. The catalogue link again? https://rcs.koha-ptfs.co.uk/cgi-bin/koha/opac-main.pl
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