Music 110: Introduction to Art Music-International Perspectives  Tags: music  

Writing can generally be classified into two categories, popular and scholarly. While you will usually need scholarly, peer-reviewed materials for most of your research, sometimes popular sources can offer good background information. For certain topics popular sources are more abundant than scholarly ones. For example, while there are peer-review journals about popular music (see the "Key Journals" box on the "Journal Articles" tab of this guide), if you need information about a recent concert or band, a source like Billboard or Rolling Stone may be what you need. The key with using any book, article, or web site is to evaluate it critically and to learn when you might need to corroborate information you read with another source (or two).

The following guides from the Undergraduate Library can help you learn to determine when something is peer-reviewed or popular.

General overview (books, articles, web sites)

http://www.library.illinois.edu/ugl/howdoi/scholarly.html

Articles

http://www.library.illinois.edu/ugl/howdoi/pertype.html