Ever left a concert wishing to learn more about the music you've just enjoyed-or hated? Want to familiarize yourself with the music of a different culture, a historical period or style? Need to know the fundamentals of music?

The most outstanding English-language music encyclopedia, "New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians," recently has published its second edition. The print edition has ballooned to 29 volumes-nine more than the original 1980 edition of "New Grove"-comprising almost 30,000 articles written by more than 6,000 contributors.

In addition to the print copy housed in the Music Library, this compendium of the world of music is available to the UB community in online form http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/units/music/e-resources/newgrove.html.

This contains the full text of the print encyclopedia, including all illustrations-several in 3-D-and lists of contributors and abbreviations. Entries reflect all genres of music, including classical, popular, light, world and jazz. Biographies of composers include complete works-lists. Additionally, performers and writers on music, terminology, sources, notation and geographical areas-yes, even Buffalo-are among the vast areas of coverage. Scholars long have depended on "New Grove" for its bibliographies; these are included faithfully in the online version as well. Only a few links to sound files currently are provided; in time, as the encyclopedia is updated, sound files undoubtedly will increase in number.

New Grove is searchable, not only by article title, but also by keywords embodied within full-text articles and bibliographies. Full-text searches also can include Boolean (and, or, not) as well as concept (synonym) and pattern (similar spelling) searching. Additionally, you can search biographical entries by name, as well as by birth or death date and place, nationality, and occupation. Links to carefully selected Web sites are also searchable. Alternatively, you can browse articles alphabetically if you prefer a more standard approach to using the encyclopedia

The Explore button is a feature still under development; clicking on it enables you to access all entries of musicians by general category. There currently are 11 categories, including performers of specific instruments, women composers, conductors, printers and publishers, and writers. In time, if the online version equals that of the print version, there will be additional categories reflecting musicians of various musical genres, historical periods, and nationalities.

Despite the millions of music-related Web sites pervading the Internet, New Grove indisputably is the finest, single, online source for music scholarship. Non-music specialists also can benefit from the coverage of music in relation to other disciplines, such as philosophy, psychology, physics, gender studies, technology and folklore. From St. Hildegard to Madonna, from Greek monody to hip hop, the vastness, variety and thoroughness of music information offered in the New Grove Dictionary truly may be in harmony with your scholarly needs.