This guide provides an overview of the most common resources for beginning research on the Grateful Dead phenomenon, a term that includes both band and fans. For the books listed here, the criterion for inclusion was whether a work was likely to be consulted by the average reader. As with any topic in popular culture, the Dead phenomenon has generated a wide array of publications, from superb scholarship to popular sensationalism. Interested readers can find more details and works in the general bibliography and the list of dissertations and theses, reprinted with permission from the scholarly periodical, Dead Letters. The Dead phenomenon continues to generate wide interest from authors, journalists and scholars; for the most recent publications, researchers should consult the interdisciplinary databases listed here.

Get Started: Reference Material || Research Tools ||
Books & Online Catalogs || Article Databases  ||
Art, Images, and Music  

  Get Started with Reference Material

Note: Hard copy Reference materials (McH Ref) are located on the 2nd Floor of McHenry Library; they do not circulate, but photocopiers are available.

The American book of the Dead: the definitive Grateful Dead encyclopedia / Oliver Trager
McH Ref ML421.G72 T67 1997

The Deadhead's Taping Compendium: an in-depth guide to the music of the Grateful Dead on tape / Michael M. Getz and John R. Dwork; with Nick Meriwether ... [et al.]
McH Ref ML156.7 G74 G48 1998

The Grateful Dead and the deadheads: an annotated bibliography / David G. Dodd and Robert G. Weiner
McH Ref ML134.5 G73 D6 1997

Skeleton key: a dictionary for deadheads / David Shenk and Steve Silberman
McH Ref ML421.G72 S5 1994

The Sixties in America / editor, Carl Singleton; Project Editor, Rowena Wildin
McH Ref E841.S55 1999

Gale Virtual Reference Library
Complete full text database of encyclopedias, almanacs, and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research.

Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians
Full text of the New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians 2nd edition. Contains: biographies of composers, performers, and writers; articles on styles, terms, and genres of music; information about regions, countries, and cities; articles on instruments and their performance pracrice; articles on popular music and jazz; information on musical concepts and notation.

Biography Resource Center
Searchable, full-text database of biographies. Search for current and historic figures based on name, occupation, nationality, ethnicity, birth/death dates and places, or gender, as well as keyword and full text.

Oxford Music Online
Read the full encyclopedia entries for the following resources: Encyclopedia of Popular Music, The Oxford Dictionary of Music, Grove Music Online, and The Oxford Companion to Music.

Reading the Dead: A Basic Grateful Dead Bibliography / Nicholas Meriwether and Robert G. Weiner

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Research Tools 

Navigating Article Search Results in Any Database

Citation Linker
Citation Linker is a quick tool to use when you have the citation for an article you need to find. Simply enter the information you know about the citation into the Web form and Citation Linker will search for the article in UCSC's online content. Citation Linker will create a menu of options for you. If it finds full text, the link will display at the top of the menu. Additional links include searching the UCSC Library catalog, Cruzcat, for print holdings, and for Interlibrary Loan request forms.

Cite Your Sources

Research Help Guides

Other Research Guides by Subject

Ask A Librarian

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Books & Online Catalogs

Search the UCSC Library Catalog. The following are examples of Grateful Dead-related subject searches:

Classic Melvyl
Books, audio, maps, and journal titles, at all UC Libraries. Eligible patrons use to borrow material through Interlibrary Loan.
Advanced search

Next Generation Melvyl Pilot
Books, audio, maps, and journal titles, at all UC Libraries. Eligible patrons use to borrow material through Interlibrary Loan.

WorldCat
Searchable catalog contains citations for books, journals, manuscripts, maps, music scores, sound recordings, films, computer files, newspapers, slides, and DVD and videotapes, on all subjects in a variety of languages at libraries around the world. Eligible patrons use UC-eLinks to borrow material through Interlibrary Loan.

CalCat
The California Libraries Catalog is a unique database that shows the holdings of books, videos, audio, maps, and other materials held by participating academic, government, public, special and school libraries in California (a publically available subset of WorldCat).

Santa Cruz Public Library

Dissertations & Theses (aka Digital Dissertations or Dissertation Abstracts)
Citations for U.S. dissertations and masters' theses. Abstracts are included for all entries published since 1980. Full text for all University of California dissertations issued since 1997 is available in PDF format. Research tip: Also try searching in WorldCat and Melvyl to find copies in other university libraries that may be obtainable through Interlibrary Loan.
As of the publication of this guide in January 2011, there are 5 PhD dissertations, 27 masters' theses, and 11 undergraduate theses, that focus on the Grateful Dead (see downloadable PDF bibliography).
 

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Article Databases

Note: For patrons who are eligible, off-campus access is available.

Academic Search Complete
Full-text articles and citations to popular and scholarly sources in many subject areas.
Covers: 1990 to the present.

ARTBibliographies Modern
Abstracts of journal articles, books, exhibition catalogs, and exhibition reviews on all forms of modern and contemporary art.
Covers: Late 19th-century to the present.

Art Full Text
Article, citations, and abstracts from art periodicals published world-wide.
Covers: 1984 forward; selected full text from 1997 forward.

Arts & Humanities Citation Index via Web of Science/Web of Knowledge
Contains citations to 1,100 arts and humanities journals.
Covers: 1975 to the present.

Business Source Complete
Searchable database of articles from scholarly business journals and other sources. Subjects include management, economics, finance, accounting, and international business.
Covers: 1965 to the present.

Cambridge Journals Online
Database with full text for over 100 journals in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities from Cambridge University Press (CU).

ERIC
Citations and abstracts of papers, articles, books, and government publications on education.
Covers: 1966 to the present.

eScholarship
Searchable database of working papers, pre-publication scholarship, and electronic texts by faculty in UC research units, centers, and academic departments.

International Index of Music Periodicals (IIMP)
Citations and abstracts for articles in peer-reviewed and other music periodicals.
Subject coverage: Music education, performance, ethnomusicology, musical theatre, theory, popular music forms, and composition.

International Index to the Performing Arts (IIPA)
Database of citations, abstracts, and some full text for articles in peer-reviewed journals and other performing arts periodicals.
Coverage varies: Some titles begin mid-1990s; some, early 1900s.

JSTOR
Older full-text articles from peer-reviewed journals.
Coverage: Latest 3-7 years not available. Use UC-eLinks or Cruzcat to verify UCSC print holdings for current years.

LexisNexis Academic
News coverage in national and regional newspapers, wire services, broadcast transcripts, international news, and non-English language sources.
Coverage: Varies.

Literature Resource Center (LRC) from Gale
Full text of biographies, bibliographies, and literary criticism of authors from all time periods.
Covers: Antiquity to the present.

MLA Bibliography Database
Database contains citations for articles, books, and book chapters in literature, languages, linguistics, and folklore. Compiled by the Modern Language Association.
Covers: 1963 to the present.

Music Index
Citations from 640+ international music periodicals. Includes classical and popular music topics, book reviews, record reviews, first performances, and obituaries.
Covers: 1979 to 2000.

Newsbank US Newspapers
Part of Newsbank's "Access World News" site. Searchable text of over 800 news sources in the United States. Includes newspapers, blogs, and some video feeds.

Periodical Archive Online (PAO)
Formerly titled PCI Full Text. Full-text database for articles from 230+ periodicals in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.
Covers: 1775 to 1995.

Project Muse
Full-text articles of 400+ peer-reviewed journals from Johns Hopkins University Press.
Coverage: Varies; mid-1990s to the present.

ProQuest Newspapers
Includes: Current and historical newspaper articles in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times (includes book review and magazine sections), and the Wall Street Journal.

PsycINFO
Citations and abstracts of articles, books, and book chapters with information on psychology and related disciplines. Also known as PsycLIT.
Covers: 1872 to the present.

RILM Abstracts of Music Literature
Citations and abstracts of articles on historical musicology, ethnomusicology, instruments, voice, dance, and music therapy.
Covers: 1969 to the present.

The Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives, 1960-1974
Searchable database that documents the key events and movements in 1960s America. Contains letters, diaries, and oral histories, posters, broadsides, pamphlets, advertisements, audio, and video materials. Also includes analysis and interpretive essays by leading historians.

Social Sciences Citation Index via Web of Science/Web of Knowledge
Indexes over 1,725 journals with subject, author, and journal title searching. Use Cited Reference Search to find articles that cite or are cited by an author.
Covers: 1956 to the present.

Sociological Abstracts
Citations for articles from journals, books, conference papers, and dissertations in sociology and other social and behavioral sciences; citations after 1974 contain abstracts.
Covers: 1963 to the present.

Sociology: A SAGE Full-Text Collection
Searchable database of 37+ electronic journals focusing on the topic of sociology.

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Art, Images, and Music

Note: For patrons who are eligible, off-campus access is available.

ARTstor
ARTstor is the Library's primary visual resource collection, collection of over one million images (as of September 2009), available to subscribers in medium-resolution format (for export), and high-resolution format (for on-line presentations or to download into ARTstor's own Offline Image Viewer). ARTstor contains a general collection ("The Image Gallery") and many specialized collections.

Accunet AP Photo Archive
The Associated Press AccuNet Multimedia Archive contains "over two million photographs dating back to 1826, more than one million audio sound bytes dating from the 1920s, two million Associated Press news stories from 1997, and a professionally produced collection of more than 45,000 maps, graphs, charts, logos, flags, illustrations, etc."

Corbis Images
A huge collection, over 100 million images, including the Bettmann Archive of historical imagery. The royalty-free images are less expensive.

Time & Life Pictures
Time and Life Pictures, sponsored by Getty Images: over 425,000 images of the finest in photojournalism, "documenting past and present political and cultural events, as well as celebrities and the American experience."

Recordings of the Grateful Dead in Cruzcat, the UCSC Library Catalog

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Guide created by Laura McClanathan, Research Services
and Nicholas Meriwether, Special Collections
Last update: 21 March 2012