Singers - Resources for Voice Students: Find Art Songs

1. In the Library Catalog, try a "Keyword" search for the title of your song. The system looks in title fields, contents notes, and subject headings. It searches first for an exact phrase. If nothing is found, it looks for words separately. If you don't know the exact title, you can combine non-consecutive words using AND between them.

2. If step 1 fails, click on Start Over, then try a "Title and Author" search. In the box marked "Author" put your composer's last name. In the box marked "Title" put "Songs." This will pull up collections that may not have contents notes. You can then look through these items on the shelf to see if they contain your song.
   
   Note: There can be "false drops" with this search. The computer looks first for your composer, then looks through all those items for ones that have "Songs" anywhere in a title field. This means a CD that has a piano sonata by your composer and songs by a different composer will be retrieved. So look the results over carefully before going to the shelf.

3. If steps 1 and 2 fail, repeat them in the OhioLINK Central Catalog to see if you can borrow your song from another Ohio academic library. Clicking the "OhioLINK Central" button on the Library Catalog search screen will take you directly to the OhioLINK catalog. To borrow an item from another OhioLINK library, click on "Request this item" and provide the information requested.

4. If all above steps fail, you can look in the published song indexes in the Dunbar Library reference section, under ML128 .S3. If you find your song in an index, then you can then search the Library Catalog or OhioLINK to see if the collection with your song is available.

Browsing for Songs

If you would like to browse the shelves for songs, here are the general call numbers to know:

• M1507 - Collections of opera arias
• M1619 - Collections of songs by various composers
• M1620 - Collections of songs by one composer (subarranged alphabetically by composer)
• M1621 - Individual songs (subarranged alphabetically by composer)
• M1621.4 - Song cycles (subarranged alphabetically by composer)
• M2100 and up - Sacred songs