Draft of Learning Outcomes for Reference session

Many thanks to David King (reference subgroup coordinator) for working with the reference trainees to create these learning outcomes for the reference workshop. Please feel free to comment on these outcomes as they are not final yet.

By the end of the Music Reference Training Session, the student will be able to:


1. Name the questions to ask in a music reference interview.

(What format do you want? What musical style is the song?, Who wrote it?, etc.)

2. Identify the most common formats for music materials.

(Sound recordings: CDs, LPs, etc., Printed music: full scores, vocal scores, etc. Visual materials: VHS, DVD, etc.)

3. Recognize the Difficulties in finding songs and instrumental music, and how to overcome them, Part 1.

(The problems in finding POPULAR SONGS (as well as other musical styles) include being part of a larger work, located in an anthology, in different languages, not cataloged adequately, etc.)

4. Describe components that are used in a CLASSICAL MUSIC title (AKA Difficulties in finding songs and instrumental music, Part 2)

(Talk about additonal difficulties in finding classical music by discussing the idea of uniform title, such as original language, music subject headings use plural form, etc. The student will learn more terms to use in a keywod search, such as opus number, key, etc.)

5. Recognize the difficulties in finding WORLD MUSIC (AKA Difficulties in finding songs and instrumental music, Part 3)

(Search terms can vary in a catalog (ex. Senegal or Africa), traditional vs. popular music, etc.)

6. Name free internet sites (and paid electronic resources like WorldCat) to use in answering music reference questions

(Allmusic.com, Music Selection Resources on the WWW, etc.)

7. List basic music reference materials their library may want to purchase

(Grove, Ken Bloom "American Song," "Song index of the Enoch Pratt Free Library," etc.)