CONSVTY 5593: Introduction to Research and Bibliography in Music

Contact Information

• To request audiovisual materials, contact soundarchives@umkc.edu 
  • Digital copies of audiovisual materials can be requested from the Marr Sound Archives without an appointment. Please contact soundarchives@umkc.edu to make an appointment to view physical items.
• To request an appointment to use non-audiovisual materials, contact specialcollections@umkc.edu
• If you're not sure, contact specialcollections@umkc.edu and we'll help you figure it out.

What We Need to Know

• Identify yourself/your group: name, class section (instructor and time).
• Identify the materials: collection name, box/folder/item, name or title of materials.
• When you plan to arrive and how many people will be at the appointment.

Appointment Logistics

• If you make an appointment, we will have your materials ready for you when you arrive. If you don't make an appointment to view physical collection materials, you may have to wait until we can pull them. Depending on what you request, this can take 10-20 minutes or, if we are having technical difficulties or there's maintenance work happening, your materials may not be available at all. We strongly encourage you to make an appointment so you can make the best use of your research time.
• We are open 9-4:30 Monday-Friday, so plan ahead to make sure you can complete your project during those hours.
• We allow photography of most collections for personal use (see copyright statement for additional information).

Reading Room Guidelines

• See Current COVID-19 Precautions above.
• Before handling any materials, we will have you wash your hands in the 3rd floor bathrooms.
• You are welcome to use a laptop, phone, tablet, notebook, or other note-taking implements during your visit. We will provide a storage area where you can keep anything you don't need to use as part of your research (for example, coats, bags, and other personal items).
• We don't allow food or drink for the protection of the materials, but you may keep a closed container of water in the storage area with your other belongings to consume as desired.
• No pen is allowed while working with materials. We will have pencils available.

If you have any questions at any point, no matter how silly it seems, please ask! We want to make this the best possible research experience for you and we understand this is a new situation and you may not understand how it all works. We're here to help you and are happy to explain anything that may be confusing.

We allow you to take photographs or request copies of materials that may still be under copyright for your personal research use. If you wanted to use them in a publication, you’d need to get permission from the copyright holder. We may limit the number of copies you can request based on both copyright and available staff time. More information about our policy is available here:

The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, U.S. Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. One of these specified conditions is that the photocopy or reproduction is not to be “used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research.” If a user makes a request for, or later uses, a photocopy or reproduction for purposes in excess of “fair use,” that user may be liable for copyright infringement. This institution reserves the right to refuse to accept a copying order if, in its judgment, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of copyright law.

Citing manuscript materials can be difficult, as they do not easily conform to common citation styles. We've put the following guide together to give you a sense of the information that should be captured. You should feel free to adapt it to conform to the order and formatting of your preferred citations style.

This citation includes all information you might be able to capture about an item. If it is not all available, include as much as you can find. It is okay to denote uncertainty (ex. a date of c. 1940s).

[Lastname, Firstname of creator/author, if known]. [Name of item]. [MS # Name of Collection], [box #, folder #]. LaBudde Special Collections, University of Missouri-Kansas City. [Date of creation].

Remember that the two most important functions of citations are:

1. Giving credit to the creator of the item you are citing
2. Leaving a trail so others can find the same item