MUS 670C: Music of Oceania: Research Strategies

Subject Headings

Here are a few subject headings useful for music-related searches. These are most effective in databases that use controlled vocabularies, like OneSearch. If you are focusing on a particular island, search in combination with the name of the island or nation or people.

• music
• popular music
• reggae music
• sacred music
• vocal music
• chant
• choral
• hymns
• songs
• ethnomusicology

Keywords

Keywords can also be used in OneSearch but are best suited for the googles. You can use both vernacular and popular terms to get more specific results. But best to consider the range of words that are used for your topic and try them all in different combinations.

1. Google Books

• Google Books can at times be a useful tool for searching within the contents of books: It searches the full text of books that have been scanned by Google. You may find items that we have at the library but did not appear in the Voyager search. (This because the keywords might not appear in the Voyager record itself, even if it appears within the full text of the book.) If a book is out of copyright or if Google has made arrangements with a copyrighted book's publisher, you will often be able to look at full-text on screen. In other cases, you will be able to see a small "snippet" of the text.

• When full text is not available online (or even if it is, but you prefer to read the printed version), keep in mind that virtually all of the books you find on Google Books will be available in print in the UH library. So you can also use Google Books as a supplement to our Voyager catalog: Search the contents of the books using Google, then search Voyager for the title.

2. Dissertations and Theses

• This database will include dissertations and theses that are not included in the Voyager Catalogue. It is a subscription service, so you may need to sign in to use it if you are accessing it from off-campus.

3. News and Newspapers

• The easiest way to do an overview search of Pacific news is using the one of the news aggregators.  We would suggest trying Pacific Islands Report first. But if you want to focus on a particular country or territory, most have national newspapers, many of which are available in some form online.

4. Hawaiian Music resources