Grove Music Online Is Now Called Oxford Music Online

The Grove Music Online database has recently been combined with some other databases and is now known Oxford Music Online—named after the Oxford University Press who owns the product.

Searching Oxford Music Online now will produce results for Grove Music Online, The Oxford Dictionary of Music and the Oxford Companion. It is possible to search all three databases separately or togther.

Grove Music Online still includes entries from the The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2nd Edition, 2001), The New Grove Dictionary of Opera (1992), and The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz (2nd Edition, 2001).

The Oxford Dictionary of Music provides concise explanations of musical terms and concepts, plus brief biographies of musicians and brief entries about famous musical works. The Oxford Companion to Music is very similar in coverage, but the articles are more expansive and often include a brief bibliography. Both of these resources focus their attention upon Euro-American classical music, though they do give cursory coverage to popular music, world music and jazz music and musicians.

Grove Music Online overlaps considerably with the preceding two resources in subject matter. It, however, provides much more detailed scholarly articles that can sometimes go beyond the understanding of the casual music lover. Since it is an online representation of more than 50,000 articles, its coverage is also much broader. Most articles include a substantial bibliography to assist with further research. Another very important feature of Grove Music Online are the listings of works included with articles about composers.

Oxford Music Online can be accessed at any San Francisco Public Library branch or the Main Library. It is also available anywhere the internet is available to San Francisco Public Library library card holders. From the Library’s homepage follow the Articles and Databases link. From there select the category Art & Music.