Music Research Methods and Bibliography, Music 786
Due: 28 May 2008
Compile an annotated bibliography on a subject of interest that will be of value to you in your professional career. The research for this project may be related to work done in other classes at Ohio State, provided, of course, that this project does not also satisfy the requirements for another course. Your bibliography should comprise all major sources relevant to the subject, including works published in foreign languages. The bibliography may consist of books, articles, reviews (of books, concerts, recordings, or published scores), dissertations, scores, primary sources (e.g., holograph manuscripts of compositions or treatises, oral history recordings, and letters), internet resources, and other pertinent resources. It may be presented either as a single alphabetized list or a classified list (e.g., a series of separately alphabetized lists devoted to different aspects of the topic). Depending upon the nature of the topic, other principles of ordering may be used, such as chronology, for example. If you choose to organize your bibliography into sections, do not subdivide your bibliography by document type, e.g., "books," "articles," and “dissertations,” etc., as this is irrelevant to content.
Please define your topic so your bibliography includes all major sources relating to the subject, and contains no fewer than 25 citations. If the scope of your bibliography is too narrow to generate a minimum of 25 major sources, consult with the instructor on ways to expand the scope of your project or your method of research. The scope of your project will determine the number of bibliographic citations. If major sources are omitted from your project (including items published in foreign languages), your grade will be adversely affected. You must search all relevant tools included in the “Pro-Forma Bibliographic Checklist” and include citations and annotations for all relevant, significant sources.
After examining these sources, you will make a qualitative judgment as to whether the source should be included in your bibliography, or rejected. If a source is to be included, you will write your first draft of an annotation on the index card[1] below the citation. If a source is to be rejected (i.e., references which looked relevant at first but were found to be insignificant upon closer examination), you should write the reasons for rejecting it below the citation. In this case your brief handwritten annotation on your card might read something like this: "Seen - not pertinent," or "Scholarship too popular or low-level," or "a completely unoriginal MA thesis from _____ ______ State University." You will turn in your index cards in two separate piles secured by rubber bands or in separate envelopes: sources included in the bibliography, and sources rejected as insignificant or irrelevant. A mark of a good bibliography is its focus: what is included and what is excluded.
Bibliographic citations must be single-spaced and in “hanging indent” form, with the second and subsequent lines being 0.5 inches indented under the first line of the citation. This aids the reader in scanning the bibliography alphabetically by author. Annotations will comprise at least one paragraph (three sentences at minimum), and should be concisely written in complete sentences, single-spaced, appearing one line below the bibliographic citation. Annotations for citations in the bibliography should be written in declarative style, as explained in the document “How to Write a RILM Abstract.” For those sources you are unable to examine, the annotation may simply indicate “Unavailable” or “Perhaps relevant but not seen.” However, your index card for such items should clearly indicate your early and continued attempts to order these items through OhioLINK or through the Interlibrary Loan Office ("ILLiad" request forms located on OSCAR).
The bibliography should be your work, not someone else's, although we always rest on others' shoulders in doing bibliographic work. Our aim must be to cite and credit the work of others scrupulously, whenever we borrow (quote) anything more than a simple bibliographic citation. In other words, an abstract written by another writer should be credited to him or her. It is permissible to quote a RILM Abstract or an abstract from another annotated bibliography, especially if the original work is in a language you are unable to read, or to quote phrases from a dissertation's abstract, provided that we credit the source using standard footnote procedures. It is not permissible to pass these abstracts off as our work, by not crediting the source(s). That is plagiarism, a serious academic offense that if detected and proven could result in your expulsion from the university.
If you do quote from other authors, please do so sparingly and judiciously. A minimum of 20 annotations must be of your own creation, free of quotations from other sources, and not including those listed as “unavailable.” The following footnotes demonstrate how you should document a quotation from a RILM abstract[2] (or other databases) and from published annotated bibliographies.[3] Later entries quoting from the same work may use a short form footnote.[4]
A preface of approximately three to five pages (double-spaced) should introduce the bibliography. The purpose of the preface is to explain:
· The title of the project. Define the topic and describe its limits (i.e., scope). Have you chosen to exclude literature from a certain time period? Are you seeking the answer to a particular question, surveying the available literature in a certain field, or investigating a subject for further research?
· How the bibliography is organized. How many subdivisions are there? What are the topics and sub-topics? Are there appendices?
· Your method of research. Describe the process of compiling your bibliography. Where did you find the most helpful information? Where did you look without finding anything? What kinds of information did you look for? Which reference works or databases were useful? (You should attach your “Pro-Forma Bibliographic Checklist” at the end of the paper as an appendix, but this section should summarize the most important elements of your research process.)
· Aspects of the topic that warrant further research. What has not been thoroughly studied by scholars, and which you might wish to investigate?
· The history of scholarship on your topic from early investigations to the present. Discuss the significant contributions to this field made by various scholars.
· The state of research or available information in your field. What are the specific problems of research in this area? Which lacunae remain to be satisfactorily investigated?
If you are studying a particular composition, you should attempt to find information about the location and condition of the composer’s holograph manuscript and other important sources (e.g., first edition, letters to the publisher from the composer listing corrections, and copyist manuscripts). This information should be given in the introduction, or form the first section of a classified or systematic annotated bibliography (e.g., “Primary and Secondary Sources, and Edition History”).
SUGGESTED METHODOLOGY: Use 5" x 8" index cards to sort, classify, and assemble your bibliography. The cards give you the room you will need for your draft (usually handwritten) annotations, and to note your attempts to locate items at OSU or through interlibrary loan.
NOTE: most OhioLINK items can be requested by you directly, on-line, and should arrive within a matter of days if they are not reference books or A-V media, so be sure to search the OhioLINK central database early in the quarter for important books and scores not at OSU that you would like to see. Simply learning how to obtain and review the material that you will need (making notes, extracting quotes if useful) is a big part of the project. I will reduce the grades of final projects showing too many items marked "unavailable" if they were in fact available on OSCAR or OhioLINK.
A labor-saving hint: Most successful students do not write everything out by hand in preparing citations (bibliography cards). They make photocopies and printouts from reference sources (indexes, databases, encyclopedia bibliographies, etc.), usually reduce or enlarge them by photocopier as appropriate, and then cut and paste them to their cards.
Often photocopies (or downloads) need to be edited to get them into proper bibliographic form for the final bibliography.
Remember that:
· OSCAR will not give you periodical articles, and
· on-line databases (e.g., periodical indexes and online library catalogs) frequently do not go back far enough to cover the entire scope of your project. So ultimately you will still need to use the printed indexes listed on the checklist.
A limited number of duplicate entries of certain books or articles will normally occur in a classified bibliography, when a reference which is clearly relevant to more than one section is posted to its proper places. This is permissible, but please edit the annotation to show its relevance to the various sections in which you post it. (Obviously, such duplicate entries will not count toward your minimum number of 25 citations for this project.)
The complete assignment will be presented in a pocket-folder or envelope (campus mail envelope is fine) containing the following items: (a) The word-processed (or typed) bibliography containing a minimum of 25 annotated citations (of which a minimum of 20 must be of your own creation, i.e., not quoted from another source), (b) the annotated cards for items included, (c) the cards representing rejections, and (d) a completed "Pro-Forma Bibliographic Checklist" keeping track of which basic print and electronic reference sources were consulted, and the manner in which they were consulted (e.g., search terms and Boolean or proximity operators used). You may not think this is important now, but if you ever return to the topic for a thesis, dissertation, or publication project, you will benefit greatly from properly completing this bibliographic checklist.
[1] I highly suggest that you use 5” X 8” index cards, but you may use another system to keep track of your sources, e.g., a database program on your laptop. Please consult with me if you do not plan to use index cards to organize your literature search.
[2] Barbara Dobbs Mackenzie, abstract for RILM record number 90-03706-ac.
[3] Joann Skowronski, Aaron Copland: A Bio-Bibliography (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985), 153 (item B592).
[4] Skowronski, Aaron Copland, 144 (item B527).