Music 143: History of Rock: Getting Started

The 33 1/3 book series is one of the best sources for album reviews.  You can search the full list of titles here.  

Selected books in the series:

You can search CDs and vinyl records on the Music Library homepage.  Click the "recordings only" button to limit search to CDs and records.

Many CDs have liner notes with information and musical analysis.

You can search album reviews on these websites:

Find full-text magazine articles on bands/artists from the 1960s to the early 2000s using these archival databases:

You can search for books in the Duke Libraries Catalog.  It's often best to search band names using quotation marks, such as "Red Hot Chili Peppers" which searches these words in order as a single phrase.

You can browse books using some of the following links:

These are some of the best resources for finding scholarly articles on rock music:

For very recent bands/artists, current newspapers and magazines are likely to be the best sources for information.  Some newspaper databases focus only on current content, and others include older issues; coverage is indicated below.

Dissertations can be surprisingly good sources for rock music research, since they are scholarly, can be very focused on particular bands/artists, and often shed new light on a topic.