Performance Reviews
Performance reviews can be located through a number of
sources. The online newspaper indexes are especially helpful for
recent reviews.
You will find that the dates of coverage varies from
newspaper to newspaper. Most of the online
newspaper indexes will contain full-text information, which means the actual
articles appear on the computer screen. The music indexes will contain some
reviews but some of the indexes are better than others to search.
The following is a list of some of the places to look for performance reviews
and some hints on how best to limit and focus your search in each of these
databases.
All Pollak Library Subscription Databases
Lexis Nexis
(To search for newspaper articles)
This database is especially good for current newspaper articles. The
reviews will appear generally within twenty-four hours. In the case
of international sources, such as the Times of London, the time lag is
about two days.
1. Click on "News," and then "Art and Sport"
2. Choose to search by "More Options"
This will make it easier to focus
your search.
3. Choose the option "Books, Movie, Music, and Play Reviews"
To see a list of the newspapers
that indexed here, Click on "Source Information"
4. Instead of searching by "Headline", choose to search by "Headline and
Lead" The lead is
the first paragraph of the article and it explains what the article is
about. The main
performers, group, piece, or conductor are listed here.
International Index
to Performing Arts (IIPA)
This database is an especially good source for performance reviews from a wide
range of journals and trade magazines. It also indexes music articles from
the New York Times and the Washington Post. The database is
updated monthly.
1. Next to Document Type type in "Performance Review."
2. Click on What's New to see the last update date. This will tell you
if the performance
review could possibly be in the database yet.
Academic Search Elite
This database covers journals, magazines and
newspapers. It covers the years back to 1980.
It will cover classical performances but the strength of this
database is the coverage of popular music topics.
Los
Angeles Times (current and historical version back to 1881)
New York Times (both current and historical
version back to 1851)
RILM
This database can also be used to search for reviews, though its strength is
searching for scholarly research materials.
1.
On the opening search screen, limit you search to document
type...Reviews.
2.
This will produce all types of reviews: book, recording, and
performance reviews.
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