WestCat for Musicians
Basic skills tutorial
The Music Library’s Homepage (www.wiu.edu/library/units/music/) is the gateway to music resources and information provided by WIU Libraries.
WestCat is the online database (catalog) including records of music materials (books, scores, audio/video recordings, and periodicals) available in the Music Library (Sallee 108). To access WestCat, click on the link under Music Library Information Electronic Resources on the homepage.
Searching the Database
[In this tutorial, the arrow heads (< >) indicate which words (search terms) to type in the search box. Type only the words, do not include the symbols (< >).]
The Quick Search tab is WestCat ’s default format and presents 3 search options (parameters):
Search for: Type in your search terms
Search by: Defines the search parameters
Quick Limit: Limits search to certain formats (books, scores, etc.) or locations
Pay close attention to what you enter in all of these boxes before clicking the Search button.
The Search by box presents a number of options: Any Word Anywhere (default), Title, Author, Subject, and other choices.
1. To search by Title.
Click on Title in the Search by box. To search for the title “The Interactive Saxophone,” enter <Interactive Saxophone> in the Search for box. Notice that you omit the initial article “The”.
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What comes up on the screen is a bibliographic record for an item, in this instance a CD that the Music Library has in its collection. The record describes the item in great detail: Author (Composer), Title, Physical Description, Contents, etc. (Note the elaborate description for a CD: 1 sound disc : digital ; 4 ¾ in.)
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Author: |
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Title: |
The interactive saxophone [sound recording] / John Vana, Jenny Perron. |
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Published: |
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Event: |
Recorded May 2005 at Foellinger Great
Hall, |
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Publisher Number: |
CPS-8763 Capstone Records |
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Physical Description: |
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The description helps confirm that this is the item you are looking for. Scroll on down to the bottom of the screen. Here is important information to tell you where the item is located and how to find it. The Location indicates it is kept in the Music Recordings section of the Music Library in Sallee Hall.
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Institution: |
WIU Libraries |
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Location: |
Music Recordings - Music Library, Sallee
Hall |
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Call Number: |
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Copy: |
1 |
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Status: |
Available |
More specifically, the Call Number (a complicated-looking combination of letters and numbers) is the library’s way of providing a unique place (address) for it in the collection so that you can find it!
The first part of the Call Number also gives an indication of the type of material. Here are a few of the options you will encounter:
MCD = Music CD
MD = Music LP
M = Music score
ML = A book about music
MT = A book about music instruction
And so on. Thus, ML410 .P7844 S4 is the Call Number for a book about the composer Cole Porter, (the .P7844 is code for “Porter”, and the S4 represents the author’s name “Schwartz”.)
2. Search by Author (Composer)
To discover what materials the library owns by a specific author or composer, search by the Author option. For items by Virgil Thomson, for example, click Author in the Search by box and type <thomson virgil> in the Search for box. (Note: the system does not require you to use capital letters or punctuation in your search statement.)
Line 1 of your results screen indicates that the Music Library has 46 items by this person.
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Number |
Heading |
Heading Type |
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1 |
Thomson, Virgil, 1896-1989 |
Personal Name |
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2 |
1 |
Thomson, W. G. (William
George), 1865-1942. |
Personal Name |
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0 |
Thomson, W. R. (William Robert) |
Personal Name |
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4 |
Thomson, W. T. (William
Thomas) |
Personal Name |
Click on the hot link in this line to bring up a listing of all 47 items. Begin scrolling down the list, paying attention to the Format column on the right hand side. You will observe items that are books, music recordings, and music scores. (Thomson also wrote books as well as music.)
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# |
Author Heading |
Full Title |
Date |
Format |
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Thomson, Virgil, 1896-1989 |
American flute concertos
[sound recording] |
1999 |
Music Recording |
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Thomson, Virgil, 1896-1989 |
American music since 1910.
With an introd. by Nicolas
Nabokov. |
1971 |
Book |
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Thomson, Virgil, 1896-1989 |
American string quartets,
vol. II [sound recording] : 1900-1950. |
1974 |
Music Recording |
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Thomson, Virgil, 1896-1989 |
Art of judging music /
Virgil Thomson. |
1948 |
Book |
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Thomson, Virgil, 1896-1989 |
Art songs by American
composers [sound recording] |
1991 |
Music Recording |
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Thomson, Virgil, 1896-1989 |
Bell doth toll, for voice
and piano. |
1962 |
Music Score |
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If you were only interested in retrieving music scores by Thomson, it is not possible to limit the result to just his scores using the Author search. (This is not a big deal here, but imagine the situation if you were browsing through everything the database found searching for <Bach, Johann Sebastian>!) To do this, we must switch to the Any Word Anywhere option.
3. Tips for searching the Any Word Anywhere (AWA) option
This option works best when you use operators. To understand how these work, read carefully the Any Word Anywhere box in the Search Examples on the screen just below the shaded search area we have been using.
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Any Word Anywhere |
DO NOT use and, or, not between search terms |
Select the Any Word Anywhere option in the Search by box and compare results from the following 3 searches in the Search for box:
i. <tone poems>
ii. <+tone +poems>
iii. <“tone poems”>
Can you explain why the results vary? The operators (+ and “”) have served to narrow (focus) your search.
Suppose you decide option iii is the most appropriate, but you only want a listing of music recordings, not scores or books. Click the down arrow on the Quick Limit box and select Music Recordings from the pop-up menu. Then type <“tone poems”> in the Search for box.
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Note that the Quick Limit menu also enables you to search just for Books, Music Scores, or Films/Videos (among other options), which is particularly helpful to musicians.
Another useful operator is the truncation (?) symbol. This is also particularly handy for musicians. The results of a search for <Symphon?> will include terms such as:
Symphony (singular)
Symphonies (plural)
Symphonie (French, German)
Symphonien (German, plural)
Symphonia (noun)
Symphonic (adjective), etc.
Other common truncation examples are <sonat?>, to include Sonata, Sonatas, Sonates, Sonaten, etc., and <concert?> to cover concert, concerts, Concerto, Concertos, Concerti, etc. The truncation symbol enables you to broaden your search to include variant spellings.
The following AWA searches will further illustrate the use of the operator symbols and truncation. Jot down and compare the number of hits for each one:
<+beethoven +piano? +sonata?>
Now this:
<+beethoven + “piano? sonat?”>
And this:
<+beethoven + “piano? sonat?” !violin>
Make sure you understand why and how, by using operators, you obtained each result. Why, for example, truncate the word “piano”?
Do the following search (no limits):
<+sonat? trumpet trombone>
Because we omitted the “+” operator before the search terms “trumpet” and “trombone”, the result of the search is to find sonatas for either trumpet OR trombone OR both. However, all the trombone sonatas are listed first because the results display in alphabetical order.
In more complicated searches it is a good idea to pick out the important words (keywords). To find a musical score of the First Symphony in C Minor by Brahms, for example, set the limit to Music scores and enter <+symphon? +brahms +“no. 1”> in the Search for box. (Note: No. 1 is treated as a phrase “no. 1”) The results show that the opus number for this symphony is Op. 68. Had you known that to start with, you could have searched for <+symphon? +brahms +op.68> or even just <+brahms +op.68>.
4. Using the Subject search option
Use this option to search for books about persons, places, and things (objects, concepts, topics).
Click on the subject search option in the Search by box.
Do the following searches:
i. <ellington duke>
The results list shows the number of books we have ABOUT Duke Ellington. Click on the hot link in Line 1 and browse the results. Select the book written by Don George. What is the book’s title; when was it written; who published it and where?
ii. <metropolitan opera house>
The results list shows the number
of books we have ABOUT the Metropolitan Opera House in
iii. <renaissance music>
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Number |
Heading |
Heading Type |
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0 |
Renaissance music |
Library of Congress |
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2 |
Renaissance-- |
Library of Congress |
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0 |
Renaissance painting |
Library of Congress |
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4 |
Renaissance--Periodicals. |
Library of Congress |
This search result is disappointing
– 0 hits! Don’t despair, click on the See
Also button on the left-hand side. This
screen tells you that the way to search for materials about renaissance music
is by century: Music—15th century, etc. This is an example of the use of Controlled Vocabulary. Because dealing with things can be so complicated, decisions have to be made about which
terms to use. The Library of Congress, in
Let’s conclude this tutorial with another title search. Set the search
option to Title and enter the search
<hip-hop