MUS 1801W: Music, Society, and Cultures

Keeping a research notebook is an excellent way to save yourself time! This can be as simple as a blank sheet of paper or Google doc. Keeping track of what you searched for, where you searched, and what you found can save you time since you won't accidentally end up re-doing any searching that you've already completed. This is also a great strategy in the event that you'll need to write about your research process - by keeping a step-by-step log, you'll have all of that info at your fingertips!

Some things to keep track of in your research notebook include:

• Your keywords (also keep track of new keywords you'd like to search for in the future!)
• The places you searched, like databases, website URLs, etc.
• The results of your search: Book titles, journal article titles, etc. and what you found in them
• Ideas for your paper - keeping track of these in one place ensures that they won't get lost or forgotten!

Once you’ve chosen a topic for your research, the next thing you’ll need to get started is a few keywords to help you search for background information and to help with finding relevant sources. Try to describe the topic you'd like to explore in 1-2 sentences - what keywords come to mind? 

Aim for making a list of about 6-8 keywords associated with your topic. These can include key composers, performers, genres, names of instruments, or any other words that you think of. These keywords will give you something to start searching for in the resources we discussed in class. 

And don’t be afraid to revise your list of keywords as you go along! The more you learn about your topic, the more refined your keywords will become – which will help you to find additional useful sources as you continue to search.

The Libraries catalog and databases are the best place to get started to find books, scholarly journal articles, scores, recordings with metadata (like who's performing and when the performance took place) and liner notes you can trust, and more! These materials are all free to you as a University of Minnesota student and by using them, you'll find more relevant and trustworthy content than you'd find by using Google (even Google Scholar!).