Finding Musical Scores and Recordings at The University of Alabama Libraries
Channel: University of Alabama Libraries
Date: 2019-03-26

This video demonstrates how to use Scout, the UA Libraries finding tool, to search the Libraries' catalog, databases, and electronic sources for musical scores and recordings. 

Transcript: 

Hi my name is Katherine, I’m the Music and Fine Arts librarian at the University of Alabama
This video is an introduction to finding scores and audio recordings of music with the libraries’
discovery tool Scout.

One of the advantages of using Scout is that it allows us to simultaneously search the libraries’ catalog,
electronic resources, and databases.

Starting at the libraries’ homepage [lib.ua.edu], select the Scout link from the quick menu. This will
take you to the Basic Search.

In Scout, we can search by keyword, phrase, title, author, or a combination several search terms.
For examples, let’s say we want to find a score of Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait, for speaker and
orchestra.

We’re going to start by searching for the composer’s name and the title of the piece.
Since we want to search for the title as a phrase, we’re going add quotation marks around Lincoln
Portrait

When we run the search, Scout returns a large number of hits, in this case over 2,000. This includes
resources like academic journal articles, audio recordings, e‑books, periodicals, scores, and more.

In order to narrow our results by format, we can use the filtering options on the left side of the results
page.

Scroll down to “Source Types” and select “Show More” to view the complete list. From this list, we can select source types be checking the corresponding boxes.

Selecting “Music Scores” will limit our results to only 9 hits, including both print and electronic resources. 

This item is an electronic version of the score that can be accessed by selecting “Electronic item available online. Click here.” 

We also have a print score that can be checked out from the Library.

The catalog information on this page tells us the score can be found in the Music Library, located on the first floor of the Gorgas Library. The call number is also listed, for locating the item on the shelf, and we can see that the item is available for check out.

We can also select the title, to view the full Scout record, which will contain additional information about the resource.

To find a recording, we can change our Source Type to Audio

Our search results contain a number of streaming recordings that can be accessed online, like this one from the Naxos Music Library

In Scout, we can use addition information in our search, such as names of conductors, performers, ensembles, and record labels to narrow our results

We can also add terms like “CD” “Compact disc” and “LP” to search for a particular format 

That’s all for now, thank you for watching. If you have any questions or would like help using UA Libraries, contact us or visit ask.lib.ua.edu to Ask‑A‑Librarian.