Reliable, Useful, and Free: Notable Bibliographic Databases on the Web

Abstract

The World Wide Web has permanently and profoundly changed the way researchers go about their business and how they think about information. While the need for authoritative, subject-specific resources providing bibliographic and other research-oriented information is not new, the method for delivering this information has changed dramatically in recent years. Gone are the days when bibliographies [End Page 411] were relatively obscure print resources of which only librarians and a select group of scholars were aware. Today bibliographic databases are big business--as OCLC FirstSearch and Web of Science prove--and most, if not all, are migrating to the Web. The following bibliographic databases are notable because they are reliable, useful, free, and related to significant musical topics.