Identifying the Importance of Types of Music Information among Music Students

This paper presents part of a study that investigates the level of importance of the various types (kinds) of information needed by music students at the Faculty of Music in one public university in Malaysia. A sample of 150 respondents of music students were taken, of which 130 (86.67 %) of the distributed questionnaire were returned. The findings revealed that two types of music information are perceived by the respondents to be important to their academic matters. They are information related to the notation (mean = 4.14) and music theory (mean = 4.02). The rest are considered as quite important which are aural skill (mean = 3.98), music instrument (mean = 3.91), music recordings (mean = 3.88), rhythms (mean = 3.83), music resource (mean = 3.87), harmony (chord) (mean = 3.81), arranging (score) (mean = 3.75) and composition (arrangement) (mean = 3.69). There is no evidence of difference regarding the level of importance of music information differences which are gender, age and course among the groups of respondents. The findings will assist the librarians to identify the information required by music students in order to fulfill the students’ information needs especially regarding the academic matters towards their academic development.