UT Song Index (review)

Abstract

UT Song Index. University of Tennessee, Knoxville, George F. DeVine Music Library. http://www.lib.utk.edu/music/songdb/. [Requires a Web browser and an Internet connection] The demand for song lyrics and sheet music remains a popular question in libraries. Finding songs in anthologies is a task with which many librarians cope. Indexes that make this task easier are welcomed and appreciated by both musicians and librarians, and the song index from the George DeVine Music Library at the University of Tennessee is a welcome addition to this field. The UT Song Index includes about 50,000 songs of all types, about forty percent of which are folk songs. Boolean searching is available with eight different fields and several ways to broaden or narrow the search. Two of the searching fields that are particularly useful are the Line and Chorus First Line, which are lacking in other online song databases examined by the reviewers. The types of songs available are also wide-ranging, from popular and folk to aria and art song. Three types of accompaniment can be searched, orchestral, instrumental, and piano, and the search can be narrowed to one of six languages, including English. It is also worth noting that songs from musical theater are listed under the song type Popular. One of the most attractive features of this resource is the Geographical or Ethnic Source search field. This is an amazingly detailed and specific list, including Faroe Islands, Jewish, not Israeli, Appalachian Mountains, and Minnesota. It is fascinating to use this index (presented in a dropdown menu) to browse songs concerned with states, countries, and regions. One must, however, use it with care, as evidenced by the results of a few searches for regions of the States: Appalachian Mountains retrieves 1,761 entries (but will not display them without further refinement due to a 1,000 item limit); California retrieves only six entries, while Ohio is good for 174. Since each song entry can have only one geographical code, these are all presumably excluded from the over 22,000 entries retrieved by a search for United States. The searching function does have some quirks. A search for songs from the movie, Brother, Where Art Thou? retrieves no results. However, in the record for the song, Nobody But the Baby, the movie is cited as the larger work. After some more trial and error, it became apparent that searching for O Brother Where Art Thou was the problem; the system does not always ignore punctuation, and in this case, one must enter the entire title with the comma and the question mark. …