Guides: Music: Home

Welcome!

This website will help you find the best library databases, search tools, and reference sources for finding music-related resources

Not sure where to start? Try these first!

LibrarySearch
Middlebury library's search engine. It searches for everything we own or have access to, including books, CDs, printed music, articles, and reference materials. It's also multidisciplinary, so you can find information about, for example, music AND psychology (go/LibrarySearch/)

Oxford Music Online This link opens in a new window
The new gateway into music research and the access point for new and forthcoming Oxford music reference subscriptions and products. Includes: Grove Dictionary of Music; Encyclopedia of Popular Music; Oxford Companion to Music and Oxford Dictionary of Music.
Naxos Music Library This link opens in a new window
The world´s largest online classical music library. Offers streaming access to more than 52,677 CDs. Over 800 new CDs are added to the library every month. The library offers the complete Naxos and Marco Polo catalogues plus the complete catalogues or selected titles from over 378 classical, jazz and world music labels. In addition, users can create playlists.

Looking for a specific piece of music? Here are some tips to help you find it using MIDCAT.

Start with a KEYWORD search. Enter as much information as you can, including instrumentation, key, work number, etc. For example, "mozart AND "violin sonata"" yields 187 results. "Mozart AND violin AND sonata AND 454" yields 9 results.
Use the Format filter to adjust your results to specific types of items, such as "Audio - CD/LP/etc" or "Scores"
Look carefully at the location of a score once you find one you want: Music Mini Scores are the first aisles of the M section and these are very small print scores, usually for full orchestra. Music Large Scores are oversized scores and are found in the special wooden shelving unit located within the M2 call number range.
Scores with a call number beginning with M2-M3 are available only for in-library use only. These scores do not circulate outside the library.

Try our FAQ page for quick answers.