All Columbia students, staff, and faculty are invited to attend Scopus Day on Wed. Oct 31, 2012.  Scopus is “…a large citation and abstract database, covering all subject areas. It contains nearly 18,000 peer-reviewed journals from more than 5,000 publishers with a range of advanced research features”.

This event will offer a “lunch and learn” session, from 11:30am-12:30pm (with free pizza!); there will also be Scopus reps on-site during the day to answer questions. There’s also a free Kindle giveaway you can enter. Full details on the event, including registration information, are offered here: https://blogs.cul.columbia.edu/science/2012/10/23/join-us-for-scopus-day-oct-31st-2012

So, if you’re researching in music, why would you use Scopus? While it’s true that the major journals in music are indexed in the music literature indexes Music Index Online, International Index to Music Periodicals (IIMP), and RILM, so much scholarly work being done now is interdisciplinary, and you may be surprised at the useful and relevant content that you can find searching in Scopus, in journals outside of the usual music-specialized titles, especially if your research interests overlap with the sciences. Another useful feature is citation tracing; you can see which other articles (and how many) have cited a given article.

Whether you can attend the Scopus Day trainings or not, take a look at Scopus and do some test searches, to discover the kind of content which is available. You’ll notice the “E-link” icons on much of the content; click on those to see if they can easily find full-text content available through the Libraries’ subscriptions (if they can’t, don’t despair – check with your reference librarian for further possible options).

Let us know if you have any questions, as always, at musiclibrary@columbia.edu.