In reviewing and packing my musicological library in preparation for a move, I came across documentation for a variety of studies and projects from the late 1970s and early 1980s that were based upon an electronic future for musical scholarship. Twenty years ago, such pioneering musicologists as Ian Bent, Barry S. Brook, Jan LaRue, and William Malm were assembling large searchable databases of writings, music, and instruments, even as theorists like Mario Baroni, Allen Forte, and Arthur Wenk were exploring computer technology to analyze and devise “grammars” of melodic construction and to identify and compare pitch-class sets. In those pre-Oakland (barely pre-Contemplating Music) days of the American Musicological Society, the gathering of such sources was considered an honorable practice—indeed, we owe the eminently useful RILM to the perspicacious Brook. While these collections of data ostensibly were to enable comprehensiveness in study and serve the purposes of comparative analysis, they ultimately did not lead to interpretation, not at least of the critical type that Joseph Kerman and later Lawrence Kramer and Susan McClary were advocating.

It is not my intention to demean or devalue such databases, which still exist and serve as invaluable sources of information. Indeed, I have created a database for the seventy-five years of programs for the Allgemeine Deutsche Musikverein, and RILM still thrives as a resource for scholars. However, the incredible expansion of the internet during the early 1990s enabled a shift in attitudes and practices that changed the way scholars carried out research: you no longer needed to purchase and shuffle CD-ROMs to access various databases; the most varied information became instantly available from any number of sources; the scholar became part of a larger virtual community that interacted through discussion lists, chat rooms, and the like; and creators of scholarly resources took advantage of the new formats to transcend mere web-based duplication of traditional print sources—for example, it was now possible to hear music that was embedded in texts and to link instantaneously to other websites.

I, for one, cautiously entered this new world of musical scholarship on the internet, not least because of the bewildering pace of technological change and its concomitant costs in the early years. However, it is hard to imagine a scholar today who has not used, if not embraced, the research capabilities presented by the internet. The present review will attempt to survey those internet resources that have developed for research into music, especially American music, and determine the extent to which they are changing methods of scholarship.

In my estimation, there exist at least five categories of online resources that are available to music scholars: online versions of print resources, online archives and databases, online journals, specialized web projects, and internet discussion lists and blogs. I should immediately warn the reader that these categories are fluid and permit much overlap: they are supposed to represent stages upon a continuum based upon the distance from print sources and the level of sophistication as internet resources. The scholar could otherwise sort these online tools by content, for example, yet the complications from crossover are even greater with that approach.

At its most basic level, the first category embraces online library catalogues and search engines for books like WorldCat, which respectively replicate the hard-copy (or published) card catalogue and union list (the Library of Congress catalogue, for example). The obvious advantages of having these resources available online—especially the catalogues of other libraries—requires no elaboration. Within the first category, I also include the online subsidiaries of the Grove franchise, the Music Index, and RILM, all of which have largely retained the look and function of their print versions despite more sophisticated search functions, and all of which are available only on a subscription basis, sometimes covered by the scholar's academic institution. They are immensely useful tools for information and bibliographic sources, especially to the extent that they are accessible from outside the library, yet these dictionaries and bibliographies do not take advantage of the online format that would have provided different structures had they been conceived as such from the ground up. Still, the links to actual articles provided by “Get It!” SFX technology for RILM and (in the future) RIPM (and academic libraries) take the bibliographic search to the next level, whereby the scholar not only finds a reference but the texts in question. In contrast, the web-based encyclopedia Wikipedia could not function in print copy, but the problems of its music (and other) coverage are central to the prevalent critique of internet-based publishing: given its idiosyncratic approach to peer review (allowing fellow users to edit and correct entries), there is no assurance that information is correct or that commentary is not excessively biased. Students and scholars alike may be fond of the convenience of Wikipedia, which does not require logging on and appears at or near the top of any Google search. However, unless looking for readily verifiable information, the user must approach Wikipedia with caution for the reasons indicated above. Next to Wikipedia I should mention websites that are encyclopedic in nature but aimed at the general public, ostensibly to encourage the love and support of classical and other types of music (among many others, ClassicalWorks, Classic.Net, ClassicsToday.com and Klassika for classical music). The quality of information on these sites is quite varied, but I find their images or image galleries for composers to be especially useful, for teaching purposes if not research. Finally, I include individual composer and artist websites in this category, since they tend to offer the same features as the one-volume biography, albeit usually with the benefits of links and sounds. Exemplary are sites for Charles Ives (http://www.charlesives.org) and Judith Lang Zaimont (http://www.jzaimont.com), among others that provide more details and features than the Grove articles. Whatever the style of music, these websites often boast the most up-to-date and complete lists of works, performances and recordings. For musicians such as writer-singer Gene Autry (http://www.geneautry.com) and television composer Earle Hagen (http://www.earlehagen.net), no entries exist in the standard print or online musical lexicographic sources. There are two drawbacks to such composer-performer websites: they are often maintained by fans or societies dedicated to the person in question, which removes the arm's length that characterizes lexica, and they almost never deal with the music in any depth. Still, having such resources available at one's fingertips is worth very much indeed.

Under the category of online archives and databases, I consider those electronic resources that have no print equivalents. While the distinction from the first group of internet sources may appear academic, these diverse tools fully and freely draw upon web-based capabilities, since they have no print model. They also require professional expertise that generates costs, which are either passed on to the consumer through user fees or are paid for by advertising. In this category I include such resources as JSTOR, Google and other search engines, and Naxos Music Library and other online music services, all of which locate and provide users with some primary desideratum, whether an article, a web site, or a recording. These tools have revolutionized how we conduct research, particularly for those scholars at institutions that do not possess large periodical or recorded-sound collections. With JSTOR, any scholar can find and print articles on a given topic, granted that her academic library includes a reasonable spread of music journals in its subscription to JSTOR. This is a wonderful tool for finding articles older than three years prior to the date of searching, since it is a “moving wall archive” of journal contents—all issues of American Music and the Black Music Research Journal up to 2003 are available at the moment, for example. Ingenta and Project MUSE provide full text for articles—current and archival—in some more obscure music journals. And the list of such resources for retrieving published texts goes on, although publishers are not yet willing to enable online access to articles that appear in a book unless it is an electronic book. One tip: some libraries now include tables of contents and even reviews in their online catalogue entries for books. Also, the “Look Inside” link on Amazon.com features that same information as well as a sample section of the book. I probably do not need to elaborate the advantages of the search engine Google, which above all requires careful selection of search terms to find specific websites or exact information. The user must keep in mind, however, that nothing found on the web through Google, Yahoo, or Ask Jeeves bears any guarantee of accuracy, originality, or quality. I recommend Google's “Images” search option, which above all is a rich source of illustrations for classroom PowerPoint presentations. With the possibility of hearing and comparing music through just the proverbial push of a button, Naxos and other online sound sources are remarkably useful for research and for scholars' free-time enjoyment. Here I include not only art music through Classical Music Library but also popular songs through the digital audio software of iTunes and Music Now, just to mention two such services. The eclectic Naxos catalogue is well suited for more obscure music of all periods (its BIS and Hungaroton offerings are most welcome in their wonderfully detailed coverage of music from the Nordic countries and Hungary), even though the quality of Naxos and Marco Polo recordings is not always the highest. For more canonic music online, there is the Classical Music Library. All of these online music services charge users or subscribers, which confirms the old axiom that no sounds or moving images of quality are free on the internet, unless the sites are sponsored by governmental agencies or institutions. In terms of teaching, I have come to rely upon Naxos Music Library and Classical Music Library for assigned listening, which avoids the legal problems of taped or burned CD compilations and enables students to access listening examples at home or through the various portable recorded-sound technologies. I can customize Naxos for course purposes by creating a playlist, but there is one potential problem: your institution may have only a limited number of simultaneous accesses, so that students may experience problems logging on at exam time. One further such online database, and a free one to boot, is YouTube, which provides users with video material submitted by fellow users. I discovered its value for music while preparing for a course on contemporary music: I was able to find videos featuring such performance artists as Laurie Anderson and Diamanda Galás as well as varied performances of 4′33″ and a full rendition of Berio's Sinfonia, just to mention several works on my course syllabus. The legality of such videos is questionable, yet they enable the instructor to hear and see (and possibly show) performative music as it is being made, often by the creators themselves. And outside the “classical” canon, the possibilities for viewing jazz and rock performances on YouTube are virtually limitless.

Judging by Music Theory Online and Echo: a music-centered journal, the first generation of online music journals bodes well for the future, even though scholars are not of one voice regarding the suitability of such ventures for academic publishing. Fortunately, reservations are heard less and less frequently, as top-notch scholars contribute to the journals and as the publications themselves demonstrate the ability to exercise peer review. These internet journals are not to be confused with electronic versions of such periodicals as the Journal of the American Musicological Society or The Musical Quarterly, which merely reproduce the contents of the print journal, giving consumers an alternative means of accessing it. In contrast, the Society for Music Theory decided to allow its two organs, MTO and Music Theory Spectrum, to lead independent lives, whereas Echo has no sponsoring organization other than the Department of Musicology at the University of California at Los Angeles. The editorial responsibilities are distributed among the program's graduate students, who contribute to make the journal fulfill the functions of a scholarly periodical, which includes large-scale solicitation of contents, arm's-length reviewing of articles, and careful editing of accepted pieces. The differences are apparent upon opening an article in Echo (http://www.echo.ucla.edu), which normally will reveal an array of images and links. Unlike print journals, Echo enables a truly interactive experience, whereby the reader can access websites, still and moving images, and even musical examples through links in the texts. Of course, the journal's contents seem chosen to exploit these capabilities of online publication. The numbering of paragraphs instead of pages (which do not exist) represents one of several features that reveal the journal upholding scholarly traditions in an electronic format. In this context, I should also mention PopMatters (http://www.popmatters.com), a “magazine of cultural criticism” that looks less like a journal than an online news magazine such as CNN.com. It is updated daily and features a wide swath of reviews of popular culture in the arts and media. Peer review may not be practiced here, but the reviews are engaging and intelligent, contributed by leading members of the arts community. Given their production costs and the relative inconvenience of print journals, I wonder how much longer societies and publishers will be able to maintain their periodical publications in hard copy. In Canada, the federal government—which provides grants to support scholarly journals—is strongly encouraging explorations of online means of delivery, not only to cut costs but to afford the widest possible dissemination of research. “Open access” publishing, whereby online articles and the like can be freely consulted by all users, has been promoted as assisting the dissemination of research findings, yet it could well be problematic for scholars in the humanities: authors are expected to pay the publication costs themselves, which might work for researchers in the sciences who possess grants from industry, institutions, and the government, but a good portion of the scholarship in music is carried out with minimal funding support, if any. It remains to be seen if academic institutions, the employers of most music researchers, will compensate them to publish in “open access” endeavours.

My fourth category embraces specialized web projects that take a topic like Uncle Tom's Cabin or song on the Mississippi River and present it in an interdisciplinary web-based project, drawing upon a variety of scholars and source and media types. Frequently sounds, sights, and words are brought together to create a comprehensive website that cuts across boundaries, even as the collaborators hail from different arts and scholarly disciplines. These web-based projects are conceived as such from the start, and thus they have no real analogues in the non-virtual world. To me, they represent the highest development of internet capabilities to date, and yet—depending on the academic area of the creator—these projects may still favor one art over another. This is the case of the Silk Road Project (http://www.silkroadproject.org), which focuses on music from and about the sites of the ancient trade route, even though the project also features a photo gallery and museum interactions. Its core group is an ensemble of fifteen musicians, which cultivates music on its international “Silk Road” tours and highlights prominent guest artists like Yo-Yo Ma and Tan Dun. More truly interdisciplinary are the web projects “The Mississippi: River of Song” and “Uncle Tom's Cabin.” The former (http://www.pbs.org/riverofsong), sponsored by PBS and the Smithsonian and based on a series of television documentary broadcasts, sounds as if it might favor music, yet once the user enters the website, she becomes aware of the wealth of resources available for the topic. The website is organized by geo-social segments of the river, for each of which the user can find local histories, stories, interviews, bibliography lists, and sound and video clips. Even though the two hosting institutions do not provide full musical numbers or interviews (those are available from PBS or the Smithsonian for a fee), you receive enough of the media to determine style and context for the excerpts. When an educational establishment hosts the website, the user is less likely to incur these extra charges. This is the case with the web-based project “Uncle Tom's Cabin & American Culture” (http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc), which is co-hosted by the University of Virginia and the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center and is funded in part by the NEH and the NEA. The site is a compendium of materials relating to the book Uncle Tom's Cabin, ranging from influences on UTC (abolitionist songs, minstrel shows, etc.) through variants of the text (1851–52), to twentieth-century films and plays that originated under its sway. Texts, illustrations, songs, and film clips equally vie for our attention in this lively and interesting tribute to possibly the most influential American book of the nineteenth century. I found it fascinating to follow links from one level to the next—the different levels of search enable a quick and reliable navigation of the website. The work of many scholars, the Uncle Tom's Cabin project exemplifies how the internet can make a host of primary sources in varying media available at one location. That most of these web-based projects have pedagogy as a goal need not detract from their usefulness as scholarly sources as well, even though the data may not be presented to us in antiseptic lists. I believe that this type of collaborative web project will increasingly characterize academic work in the future, and scholars are well advised to consider how the type of research they undertake can be presented to a broad public in this manner.

I cannot close this review without considering the more ephemeral internet resources of blogs and discussion lists. They are not intended to represent the fruits of long-term research projects in an authoritative text (whether web-based or print), but rather capitalize on ideas of informal interactivity and liveness. Blogs (short form of “web log”) are websites maintained by individuals for the expression of their opinions, as embodiment of the adage that “everyone's a critic” and in the popular belief that everyone's opinion matters. However, professional music critics such as Kyle Gann (Village Voice) and Alex Ross (The New Yorker) maintain websites of their own, featuring frequently consulted blogs (respectively, http://www.kylegann.com and http://www.therestisnoise.com). Indeed, the decline in print journalism has forced trained music critics to turn to the web for the expression of their judgments, whereby the lines between “professional” and “amateur” have become blurred. I consult blogs of all types, whether to keep informed about musical events and developments, to read the opinion of a favorite writer, or to uncover what the “average” person thinks about a given work. I also participate in several musical discussion lists, which provide useful information and expose the opinions of colleagues in musicology. The SAM discussion list is not particularly active, but on occasion American topics arise on the AMS list. The major problems of these internet resources is the questionable accuracy of “facts” and the amount of time they can consume, yet they do keep scholars informed about developments within their field and establish a virtual community within musicology.

At the end of my reflections about the music scholar and the internet, I cannot help but marvel over how this technological development has changed the way so many of us conduct our research. And yet the revolution continues: what I have provided is a snapshot of the state of developments at a particular point in time (and one shaped by my idiosyncratic needs and practices). By the time this piece goes to press, new possibilities will have opened up. That for me is the excitement of living in this time of change.