Music periodicals are a category of “current” information, where issues of a title are published on a repeating basis (monthly, quarterly, etc). At OC Libraries, most periodicals are available through our databases. Music periodicals can target different audiences (general, professional, scholarly), cover various aspects of music, cover a range of genres, and also cross over into other subject areas, including history, education, anthropology, and neuroscience to name only a few.

As such, you may want to determine what types of information you need for a research project. Are you looking for current news and events? Or professional information related to teaching? Or trade information related to the music industry? Or do you need longer, peer-reviewed research articles on more substantive topics such as theory? If you have questions about types of periodicals and where you might find them in the OC Libraries databases, you can always get help from a librarian!

There are various ways to search for music periodicals at OC libraries.

1. You can limit to searching “Articles” in the search bar on the home page. You can further limit your results on the left side of the results screen to “Peer-reviewed Journals.”  (For newspaper articles, search our newspaper databases individually.)

2. If you know the title of a publication, you can search our Journal List by name (or keyword), and then search within that publication in our databases.

3. Finally, you can search for articles in individual databases. Below are a few suggested databases for music research. Remember, to access databases and articles off-campus, enter the student email address and password you use for Canvas.

If you find an article that we don't have access to, let us know! We can get it for you through Inter Library Loan.