Reference works are an important and distinguishing feature of music study; one of the reasons that a music bibliography course is de rigueur at the graduate level. Not only do we have dictionaries and encyclopedias, but also bibliographies, thematic catalogs by composer, repertory, and collection, complete works, and musical monuments, among others. There are some similarities between online and print reference works. For example, the Bonfils-Stanton Post-1945 Women Composers Index and plainsightSOUND both provide mechanisms for searching across post-war chamber works written by women and the works of Black classical musicians in Britain respectively, albeit in a way that is not entirely equivalent to analogue counterparts. Categories of reference more typically encountered in the digital world include syllabuses, LibGuides like the Ravi Shankar Collection at CCNY, and wikis like the Wind Repertory Project. This directory itself is a work of reference. And like all the others, it provides a trail of breadcrumbs for threading one’s way through a specialized research need.
In no particular order…