Most of the Beethoven Center’s library materials (books, scores, recordings, etc.) are included in the San José State University Library catalog, OneSearch
Beginning in July 2017, the entire online catalog of materials at the Beethoven Center was integrated into the OneSearch catalog at for the San Jose State University Library.
Although the separate database devoted to the Beethoven Center’s collection is no longer available, search results in the OneSearch catalog can be limited to the Beethoven Center’s holdings using this direct link. All of the specialized indexing terms created for the Beethoven catalog are still retrievable using keyword searches. To explore these specialized terms, consult the Beethoven Thesaurus, which is a separate database.
This basic guide suggests some methods for finding Beethoven Center materials in the OneSearch catalog. For a fuller tutorial, see the OneSearch libguide.
Connect to the online catalog. Authors’ names, titles, subject keywords may be entered in the basic search window. However, we recommend that you use the Advanced Search option.
In the Advanced Search window, you can select the type of material (scores, books, etc.) and keywords for your search.
The Beethoven Center catalog has open access. You are not required to “sign in” even though the search results prompt you to do so:
However, the sign-in process gives San Jose State University students and other SJSU patrons access to restricted databases and allows them to borrow materials from other libraries. If you have a SJSU Tower ID and password, go ahead and sign in.
PLEASE NOTE that the examples below show searches limited by Location: Beethoven Center. This is no longer necessary when searching using the direct link to the Center's collection.
To locate scores, the simplest way is to enter the Opus or other thematic catalog number (WoO, Anhang, Hess, etc.) for the Beethoven work. If you don’t know the Opus number, try searching in Google by the title or genre of the work. You can also find work numbers by using the Beethoven Thesaurus. For example, a search in the Beethoven Thesaurus on “Eroica symphony” leads to the used term, “Opus 55.” Please note, however, that the Beethoven Thesaurus is not linked to the online catalog. We recommend that you keep two browser windows open—one for the library catalog and one for the thesaurus—to switch back and forth easily between the two. When you find an appropriate search term in the Thesaurus, copy and paste it into the search window for the catalog. See “searching for books/articles by subject” below for more information on the Beethoven Thesaurus.
The screen below shows a search for scores of the Eroica Symphony, Opus 55. We recommend that you enter the work term in quotation marks to avoid retrieving other works with similar Opus numbers. You can also refine your search by adding a line to include publisher, and limit by date:
To find sound recordings, we recommend that you choose “All items” in material type, then select recordings from the resource type window in the results. Selecting the “Audio/Visual” material type in the Advanced Search does not work for sound recordings.
The Beethoven Thesaurus contains terms used to index the subjects and genres of Beethoven Center materials and are searchable in the catalog. The thesaurus provides definitions of how we use the terms and suggests other possible terms (related, broader, or narrower terms) for searching. The example below shows the thesaurus record for the term “chromaticism.” Consult the thesaurus before you begin your search, or simply enter keywords see what you get.
In the OneSearch catalog, we recommend that you enter these subject terms as “any field.” You can add multiple lines for entering separate terms.
If you want to search for specific phrases, we recommend that you enter them in separate fields and place quotation marks around them (e.g. “compositional process” AND “Opus 55”),
When reviewing your results, you will see that the Beethoven Thesaurus terms appear as “subjects” in the records:
Genre terms (what we call “categories” in the Beethoven Thesaurus) will also appear as “subjects” in resulting records. Category terms can be entered as keywords in “any field” searches.
The migration of the Beethoven Center’s catalog to OneSearch had a few bumps in the road, and we are still cleaning up some records, so please let us know if you encounter any problems by contacting Patricia.Stroh@sjsu.edu.