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Music Searching Tutorial: Part 2: Topic Search

Part 2A: Topic Search using the Simple Search

A topic search is often used to find information needed for a paper or assignment which requires gathering multiple sources (often books and articles) that will be synthesized and organized.

The Library Catalog / Books & More is an essential source for books, scores, audio and video and very important to find music performance and research materials. This guide will begin with searching in the Library Catalog and then applying search techniques and strategies to other databases.

Step 1 - Do a basic search using the terms you know
  • To search the online catalog go to the Library home page.
  • The default search is Multi-Search so use the menu to select Books & More which will search the online catalog only.
  • Do a basic search using the name you know.

Example 1: Want to compare and discus the heroines in Mozart's operas / key terms: Mozart opera

Step 2 - Viewing the results list
  • From the list you see 91 results and those in the beginning are audio records. 
  • The Format menu on left allows you to limit your results, and in this search books are needed.

Full Results List example

  • The results list contains 4 records which are all books (Active filters: Books  on left menu)
  • Select specific records that look promising based on the titles. The titles may give you ideas of terms or ideas that could shape your search and topic as will various fields in the detailed record.
  • Consider selecting the link Remember all filters if you are doing multiple searching. The filter will stay in place during your until your clear it/them 

Results limited by Format: Books

Step 3 - Look at relative records to for more information and other search terms
  • Look at the Subject fields to see if there are any subjects or subject terms you can use in a search
  • Look at the Contents field to see if there are any other terms which could be used in a search
  • Look at the Summary for a synopsis of the book as well as terms and ideas that might relate to your topic.

The decision of how to proceed and when you have found enough material is always up to you. This is YOUR research and you understand your assignment or personal interest that sparked the search. While doing 1 search may give you some results are that useful, stronger research requires doing multiple searches and using multiple resources

Details Section of individual record

Step 4 - Use additional terms to expand your search
  • Alter your search by changing the search terms - replace heroines with female characters
  • The results list had more titles and those titles provide additional search terms: gender, women, sexual, sexuality
  • The individual records (not just the one shown above) provide more subject headings, as well as search terms from the contents and summaries
    • Subject headings: Women in opera, Sex in opera, Feminism in music, Gender identity in music, 
      Man-woman relationships
    • Search terms: female characters, feminine, gender, gendered, sex, sexual, sexuality

The first of search of mozart AND opera AND heroines yielded a number of subjects and additional search terms that can be used in the search. How the search develops is up to you--and there is no one search or one search strategy. The search should evolve according to your personal interest.

Summary of the Simple Search (1 search box)
  • Can combine a number of terms in a single search.
  • Terms are automatically connected by AND (for example mozart AND opera AND heroines)
  • Can do other search operations if you know what to type. One commonly used tool is to put quotation marks around words that you want searched as a phrase. For example typing mozart opera "female characters" would find the terms female characters only when they are together and in that order.

Drawbacks of using Simple Search:

  • Limited opportunities to build more complex searches which are often needed for finding music materials.
  • Cannot search by title, subject, etc.

Part 2B: Topic Search using more advanced features

The Advanced Search allows you to develop more complex search using multiple search boxes and indexes. 

Navigating to the Advanced Search

There are two ways to select the Advanced Search

1. Go to the Library Home page > Change Multi-Search to Books & More > now select the Advanced Search link under the single search box 

2. Select the Advanced Search link to the right of the Simple Search box

Using the Advanced Search

The Advanced Search provides 2 search lines or boxes. If you had navigated to from the Library Home page before you started searching the page would be blank. If you navigate from a simple search you have done, your search terms will be transferred to the Advanced search, but clicking Search in the lower right corner would just return the same results you used in the Simple Search.

Advanced Search if navigating from Simple Search

To utilize the features of the advanced search you need to delete or move your search terms--structuring your search around the main concepts or parts of your search.  In this case our search has 3 concepts: mozart, opera, heroines

  • On the left side of the page is + ADD A NEW LINE. Additional boxes can be added as needed.
  • The word AND is the default for connecting search terms. mozart AND opera AND heroines Each term must be somewhere in the results. The use of AND and addition terms NARROWS the search
  • Each line is searching Any Field (which means keyword) and contains the term(s) in the line (these will be discussed later.
  • On the right hand side next to the box you can use the format menu and change format to book before doing the search 

Once again, if I moved each concept to a separate search line and hit search my search would the same as the search done in the Simple Search. If we had started in the Advance Search this would have been our search.

Building on Search Terms in Advanced Search

From the earlier searching in the simple search we already now that there are other word that can be used in addition to heroines. In the advanced search we can keep adding them to the search by adding them to the third search box by using OR between the terms. 

  • Line 1 Mozart
  • Line 2 opera
  • Line 3 heroines OR female characters OR women (the OR needs to be capitalized when connecting search terms)

The search using OR and multiple terms increased the results (now have 71 results in contrast to 4 in the original search).

Advanced Search example using OR to expand search and increase results

Using an asterisk to search the root of a word and all its variations

There were other search terms identified in earlier searches which may also be helpful or add a different aspect including gender, sex, sexuality, feminism, etc. You could do each as a separate search but as we have seen you could add them to an existing search by using OR. If these terms were added here would be the total number of results.

mozart AND opera AND (heroines OR female characters OR women OR gender OR sex*) = 111 results

Note:

  • The search term sex has an asterisk (*) after to expand the search to all words with sex as a root. Using sex* will search sex, sexes, sexy, sexual, sexuality, etc.  You have to be careful as it can also bring up words you are not searching for such as sextet which does appear in a handful of records.
  • Normally a search term such as sex or sexual will appear in the catalog record highlighted in yellow. If you use the asterisk (*) the search terms (sex, sexual, sexuality. etc.) will not be highlighted making it harder to identify the term in the Contents and Summary fields.

Advanced Search Example with terms and an Asterisk (*): mozart AND opera AND (heroines OR female characters OR women OR gender OR sex*

Using NOT in the Advanced Search

When you do this type of search and your results keep growing, how do you review the results without looking at materials you have reviewed. The search using mozart AND opera AND (heroines OR female characters OR women) returned 71 results. If you have already reviewed these 71 and don't need to see them in a future search search you can use NOT. The explanation sound complicated so be sure to look at the example.

  • Add a fourth line into the advanced search 
  • Take the search terms in the original search (in the case heroines OR female characters OR women) and type or paste these terms into the 4th search line. 
  • Change the AND at the beginning of the 4th line to NOT by using the drop down menu
  • Type the new search terms in the now empty third line gender OR sex*

Caution: Use NOT very carefully. The example shows how to use once you have reviewed the results of the first search (heroines OR female characters OR women) and do not need to view them in your second search since you have already reviewed them. DO NOT start of using NOT as part of your first search as you could exlude important items.

Advanced Search Example using NOT: removes previous search terms from results and displays 40 results rather than 111 total

Observation:

You may have noticed that the menu with AND and NOT also contains OR. Using this OR is complicated.

  • If you are just using two or three lines each with a single word or phrase you can connect lines by OR. For example Line 1 OR Line 2 OR Line 3
  • DO NOT use both AND and OR to connect lines. For example, Line 1 AND Line 2 OR Line 3 will not work.
Using Subjects in the Advanced Search

The searches shown so far have all been keyword searches. The term(s) is/are being searched in multiple fields in the record: title, subject, contents summary. Databases such as the catalog often provide subject headings which indicates the items has been examined and has using information on the subject. Using the subjects helps you easily identify those items that are most relevant and which you may want to look at early in your research. At the beginning of this discussion of the topical search, we identified some subjects which might be useful: Women in opera, Sex in opera, Feminism in music, Gender identity in music, Man-woman relationships.

The Advanced search makes it easy to do subject searches by using menu to change Any field to Subject

Advanced Search example using the Subject index

Part 2C: Summary of Topic Search

Simple Search vs Advanced Search

The Simple Search is quick and easy but more limited.

  • Search terms automatically connected with AND.
  • Useful but limited search options and features.

The Advanced Search provides a good framework for identifying and developing topic concepts in different lines or boxes

  • Search lines are connected by AND but can easily be changed to 
  • Easily use OR within a line to develop a concept and include more terms
  • Change search from Any field to Subject, Title, etc.
  • Use NOT to eliminate items from a search, such as materials you have already reviewed in a previous search.
  • Often better to start in the Advanced Search when doing more than looking up a known title  or other simple search

Simple and Advanced Searches

  • Use quotations marks (" ") around terms to search them as a phrase "female characters"
  • Use an asterisk (*) at the end of a word to search all words with that word as a root: sex* = sex, sexy, sexual, sexuality, et.
The Search Process
  1. Start a search with the terms you know. Recommend using Advanced Search as there is more options to develop your search.
  2. Look at the results and the details (title, subjects, contents summary, etc.) of those records and identify addition terms you want to use to develop your search. 

As stated earlier, successful searching and research comes from asking questions, being curious, and thinking critically.

Topic Search: Exercise

Navigate to the Library Catalog from the Library Home Page. You can either start with a Simple Search or an Advanced Search, but you will eventually have to use the Advanced Search

 

1. Do a search with the terms mozart opera gender. How many books do you find?

 

2. In the search examples above the term sex was used with an asterisk (sex*) to search for all the words with sex as the root word. As mentioned this also brings up results with sextet.
For your next search DO NOT use the asterisk but include the word sex, sexual and sexuality to your search for gender. Hint: the search should be an advanced search and with 3 lines. How many books do you find?

 

3. Do a search where you EXCLUDE the term gender from your search results and you are only viewing the results for mozart opera sex sexual sexuality. How many books do you find?

 

 

Click for the Answers for the Topic Search Exercise