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Music Research Guide

This guide provides resources for Music Performance, Music in the Liberal Arts, Music Production and Recording Arts, & Music Education

Open Access: Journals

Directory of Open Access Journals: Music
DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals.

List of Open Access Music Journals (LOAMJ)
A searchable database comprised of 182 open access journals focusing on music. 

Open Access: Music Education Resources

Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education
ACT publishes refereed and invited critical, analytical, theoretical, and policy development articles of international interest that illuminate, extend or challenge the Action Ideals of the MayDay Group. Research based in and across a variety of disciplinary perspectives is thus encouraged and welcomed: e.g., education, music, philosophy, sociology, history, psychology, curriculum. Published/Hosted by Mayday Group.

GEMS (Gender, Education, Music, and Society)
GEMS is a peer-reviewed, on-line journal that brings together dynamic, critical interdisciplinary research at the myriad intersections between gender, education, music and society. 

Journal of Music History Pedagogy
Bi-annual, peer-reviewed, open-access, on-line journal dedicated to the publication of original articles and reviews related to teaching music history of all levels (undergraduate, graduate, or general studies) and disciplines (western, non-western, concert and popular musics).

Music Education Research International (MERI)
Annual refereed research journal published online  by the Center for Music Education Research, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida.

Review of Research in Human Learning and Music (RRHLM)
Publishes reviews of literature related to the various dimensions of music activity in the human experience. RRHLM provides teachers, musicians, scientists, and other scholars current information about music learning, music performance, music perception, and the effects of music on multiple aspects of human functioning.

Visions of Research in Music Education
Fully refereed critical journal appearing exclusively on the Internet.

VOICES
International journal for music therapy published by GAMUT, Grieg Academy Music Therapy Research Centre, University of Bergen (Norway). The journal publishes accessible texts in a range of genres.

From the ASU Library Open Access Resources Guide 

Open Access: Audio Resources

Bandcamp
Browse best-sellers, new releases, artist recommendations, vinyl, and more

CCmixter
Collaborate with 45,000 musicians. Around the world.

Freesound
A collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings and more.

Internet Archive: Audio
Recordings ranging from alternative news programming, to Grateful Dead concerts, to Old Time Radio shows, to book and poetry readings, to original music uploaded by our users.

Public Domain Project
Download thousands of historic media files for your creative projects. Completely free & made available by Pond5.

Wikimedia Commons: Sounds
"A database of 17,992,841 freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute"

World Hip Hop Beats
A collection of Creative Commons licensed hip hop beats.

YouTube Audio Library
Browse and download free music for your project.

Open Access: Video Resources

CC Search
Search across several repositories, including YouTube, Google, SoundCloud, and more, for still images, music, and videos.

Internet Archive - Moving Image Archive
This library contains digital movies uploaded by Archive users which range from classic full-length films, to daily alternative news broadcasts, to cartoons and concerts. Many of these videos are available for free download.

The Open Video Project
A shared digital video collection.

Ted-Ed
Education-focused videos. TED-Ed Animations are our signature content: short, award-winning animated videos about ideas that spark the curiosity of learners everywhere.

TED Talks
TED is a nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks (18 minutes or less).

YouTube EDU
Lectures, presentations and interviews and other videos from universities in the US

Public Domain Project
Download thousands of historic media files for your creative projects.
Completely free & made available by Pond5.

Learning On Demand
Elon University's Learning On Demand is a curated repository of educational videos produced by Elon University faculty, staff, and students. It includes many speakers at Elon.

The Prelinger Archive
11,000 digitized and videotape titles (all originally derived from film) and a large collection of home movies, amateur and industrial films acquired since 2002. Note: Read the Rights section before utilizing.

Open Access: Miscellaneous

Library of Congress 
Searches across and provides access to the more than 300 digital collections created by the Library of Congress. Includes photos, prints, drawings, maps, books, manuscripts, audio recordings, films, notated music, newspapers, and archived websites.

Billboard Magazine 1936 to 2014
Billboard is an American music magazine. It was first published in November of 1894 and is distinguished as being among the oldest trade magazines in the world

Boston TV News Digital Library 
An online catalog of news content from Boston Public Library’s WHDH film collection (1960- mid-1970s), Cambridge Community Television (1988 to 1999), Northeast Historic Film’s WCVB film collection (1970-1979), and WGBH-produced The Reporters (1970-1973), Evening Compass (1973-1975) and the Ten O’Clock News.

ChoralWiki 
Home of the Choral Public Domain Library

Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) 
The Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world. It strives to contain the full breadth of human expression, from the written word, to works of art and culture, to records of America’s heritage, to the efforts and data of science.

Eastman School of Music - Sibley Music Library > Musical Scores 
Scores and books in the public domain. Many of these are unique to the Sibley Music Library collection.

Internet Archive 
Over 2.5 million full-text books online. Download free books and texts. The Internet Archive Text Archive contains a wide range of fiction, popular books, children's books, historical texts and academic books.

LibriVox 
Free public domain audiobooks

Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music, ca. 1870 to 1885 
Consists of over 47,000 pieces of sheet music registered for copyright during the years 1870 to 1885. Included are popular songs, piano music, sacred and secular choral music, solo instrumental music, method books and instructional materials, and music for band and orchestra.

Mutopia 
"The Mutopia Project offers sheet music editions of classical music for free download. These are based on editions in the public domain."

Petrucci Music Library 
International Music Score Library project "virtual library containing all public domain music scores as well as scores from composers willing to share their music without charge"

RISM: International Inventory of Musical Sources 
RISM (Répertoire International des Sources Musicales) contains bibliographic records of music manuscripts written after 1600. The records include information in standard bibliographic categories as well as graphical images of over 638,000 music incipits. These primary sources are manuscripts or printed music, writings on music theory, and libretti. They are housed in libraries, archives, monasteries, schools and private collections.

WGBH Open Vault 
Open Vault is the home of WGBH Media Library and Archives, providing online access to unique and historically important content produced by the public television and radio station WGBH. The ever-expanding site contains video, audio, images, searchable transcripts, and resource management tools, all of which are available for individual and classroom learning. Visitors can become a "member" (free) of Open Vault: to access records and save findings.