Just as the names imply these databases contain information about art, artists, music and musicians.  They are designed for middle school students and up.

New Portals to Music and Art Databases

Oxford University Press (OUP) has launched two new portals that will take users into expanded and enhanced versions of its art and music databases, including the Dictionary of Music and Musicians, The Dictionary of Art and Encyclopedia of Popular Music.  On our Databases A-Z list we are still calling them Dictionary of Art and Dictionary of Music and Musicians.  

Dictionary of Music and Musicians integrates online music resources. A number of changes have been made, including:

• New structure – it now groups together all Grove articles on a single subject (e.g. Mozart or Paris) under one search result. The first article linked to by a search result is now the primary Grove Music Online article on the subject.
• Improved search functionality
• More frequent updates – major updates is three per year.

Dictionary of Art
Is the new gateway for the redesigned Grove Art Online. Users will now be able to cross search and browse a suite of art reference publications simultaneously with this database. In addition to upgraded site functionality and a new graphic design, other new features include:

• The ability to search and browse for Grove images and image links in a single place. Users will find more than 5,000 images available from new image partners – the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Art Images for Collection Teaching (AICT) and the Artists Rights Society.
• Help for students and educators through the new Tools and Resources feature; includes lesson plans, new thematic guides on major topics in art history and new timelines of world art.
• More than 85 new and updated articles with death dates for distinguished contemporary artists, along with expanded articles on important artists, architects and collections based on new research.
• Provide links to websites for external images which is pretty cool.

Tip: Highlighting of search terms can be turned off just by clicking the “Highlight on/off” link up at the top of the page.

Wow Factor: Both databases provide timelines. The Art database provides beautiful photos as well as an in-depth timeline by continent. Access to it is easy to from the Timeline link in the right hand column of the home page. The Dictionary of Music timeline is a little hard to locate – it’s under “Learning Resources”. Once there you will find several timelines including Women in Music and Contemporary Music.