New Edition of Kate L. Turabian's Manual for Writers is in the Music Library!

The Music Library recently received the most recent edition of A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers, 8th ed., by Kate L. Turabian, revised by Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, Joseph M. Williams, and the University of Chicago Press Editorial Staff. This revision contains some minor but important updates compared to the 7th edition, which I discussed in a blog post from 2008. It can be found in the Music Reference Collection with call number MUR LB2369 .T8 2013.

This manual contains detailed guidance for the citation conventions used by many scholarly music publications and required by many music faculty, and it also contains over 100 pages of guidance on the research and writing process in Part I: "Research and Writing: From Planning to Production," which itself is adapted from Booth, Colomb, and Williams's book, The Craft of Research, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).

I would like to highlight some particularly noteworthy changes in this new edition below. Section numbers beginning with 17 refer to Chapter 17, covering the bibliography/notes style of citation; section numbers beginning with 19 refer to Chapter 19, covering the author/date or parenthetical reference style of citation.

If you have ever wondered how to cite something you read on a social networking site, this edition will help you construct your citation at 17.7.3 and 19.7.3. Feature films can often be the subject of scholarship, and you can learn to cite these at 17.8.3.1 and 19.8.3.1. Similarly, the manual will guide your citations of "videos and podcasts" at 17.8.3.5 and 19.8.3.5.

If you were used to having "video recordings" in their own section, as they were in the 7th edition of Turabian's Guide, you can now find guidance in sections 17.8.3.1 and 17.8.3.2 or 19.8.3.1 or 19.8.3.2.

Though these sections are not new, they are important for music scholarship: "Sound Recordings" are covered in 17.8.4 and 19.8.4, and "Texts in the Visual and Performing Arts" are covered in 17.8.5 and 19.8.5.

New Resources for Music Research

If you are working on a research project, and are stuck, need some help, or just want to brush up on your research skills, the Music Library has two relatively new books in the reference collection for you! Laurie Sampsel's Music Research just arrived today, and we have had the seventh edition of Kate L. Turabian's A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations for a few months now. See complete citations below:

• Sampsel, Laurie J. Music Research: A Handbook. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Call no. MUR ML113 .S28 2009.

This book is a very well annotated bibliography, divided into two parts: "Research Process and Research Tools," and "Writing, Style Manuals, and Citation." It has something for everyone, from advanced researchers to those new to academic music libraries. To get started, Sampsel's chapters on library catalogs (ch. 4), and periodical indexes (ch. 5), are excellent.

• Turabian, Kate L. A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers, 7th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Call no. MUR LB2369 .T8 2007.

This is a major overhaul of Turabian's style manual. Much has been added since the publication of the sixth edition in 1996. For starters, this new edition contains an entire section of material on the research process. Authors Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams contributed this section, using material from their text on the research process, The Craft of Research, 2d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). Also, the organization of the chapters on the way sources should be cited seems much more intuitive. The "notes-bibliography" and "parenthetical citations-reference list" styles are now addressed in separate chapters. And very importantly, there are many more examples of how electronic information should be cited!

I encourage anyone who is working on a music research project of any kind to consult Sampsel's book, and I also highly recommend Turabian's style manual, if you are not required to use another style (such as MLA or APA).