SuperSearch

The University has recently introduced a powerful finding tool called 'SuperSearch'. SuperSearch allows you simultaneously to search the library catalogue and a number of databases, and is now the main gateway to e-journals and other online resources, such as Grove Online. It allows you to customise your own list of e-journals, databases and searches.

Like all powerful tools, however, it can be dangerous if you don't know how to use it properly!

To get the best out of SuperSearch, you should attend one of the Library's training sessions. You can enrol in a session at http://buffy.infodiv.unimelb.edu.au/infolit/libclass.

But it is also important that you understand how the databases and finding aids work, so that you can use them most effectively.

Accessing SuperSearch

There is a link to SuperSearch on the Library homepage. After you have gone to the SuperSearch page, you need to log on, in order to access most of the databases (the ones with the beside them). The Log-on button is on the top RH side of the screen.

You can also perform a keyword search directly from the Library homepage, but this is, in general, not very helpful for music students. This will perform a search on the most popular databases across the University. These are mostly science and business databases, and are of little use for music-related searches.

For example: a keyword search on 'Beethoven' in the most popular databases produces 60919 results. No doubt many of these will be useful references, but finding the good ones could take a lifetime. And some of them won't be at all useful: Business Source Premier (EBSCO), for example, produces 450 hits, the second of which is an announcement that a Dutch chemical company is moving its premises!

Finding Music Specific Resources

There are really only a few resources on SuperSearch that you are likely to need as an undergraduate music student:

Grove Online
RILM and/or Music Index
JSTOR

(for more about RILM, Music Index and JSTOR, see Indexing and Abstracting Services)

These, and a few others, can be found by selecting 'Music' from the 'Resource Sets' list on the LHS of the screen, or by selecting 'Music' from the 'Subjects' list, and then selecting 'General'. To learn how to save these into your own personal set of databases, attend one of the training sessions.

A word of warning about MetaSearch

MetaSearch allows you to search a number of databases and resources simultaneously, but allows very little control over the kind of search that you do, and therefore returns very large numbers of hits.

A MetaSearch of the Music Resource Set databases for the term Sturgeon (obscure fifteenth-century English composer) brings up 4130 hits

Grove: 241
RILM: 5
JSTOR: 4083

The RILM number probably best reflects that actual state of current scholarship: the Grove number is very high because rather than doing a title search, which brings up one article, is does a full text search, calling up every mention of the word in every article in the whole site.

The JSTOR figure is even higher because it does a full text search on the whole of JSTOR, not just the Music journals, so most of these references are probably to the caviar-producing Russian fish!

You would therefore be much better off going to each individual database (by clicking on the linked title) and searching within the database. The extra time taken to perform three or four different searches would soon by saved by not having to sift through 4130 results.