Music and Health Institute Taxonomy

Until now, existing research on the intersection of music and health has been hard to sort through because it is dispersed across academic fields and often cataloged with only broad terms, such as "Music" and "Music Therapy."

The goal of the Music and Health Institute Research Collection is to improve access to relevant research by collecting it into one location and enabling the recognition of trends across the evidence base. In order to facilitate discovery, the Music and Health Institute Taxonomy was developed by Heather Hedden of Hedden Information Management and Joy Allen, PhD, Acting Director of the Music and Health Institute of Berklee College of Music.

The MHI Taxonomy enables users to find quality evidence that can help them compare and contrast different studies on music and health; build on existing work; and identify gaps in the literature to build a research agenda. Each of these actions will contribute to the creation of a strong evidence base needed to convince the medical community that music has a place alongside more traditional clinical treatments.

Taxonomy Hierarchy

The taxonomy hierarchy includes both medical terms and music terms and is divided into several sections:

• Medical-related Terms
  • Condition or Disease
  • Procedure or Treatment
  • Outcome
  • Tests and Measuring Methods
  • Special Populations
  • Setting
• Music-related Terms
  • Music and Health Topic Areas
  • Music Interventions

Search With Taxonomy

The MHI Taxonomy is used to consistently index all records in the Music and Health Institute Research Collection. When you run a search on any word or phrase, your search results will include any record that includes that term anywhere in the record, included in the field labeled "MHI Taxonomy." There are two ways to search:

• Advanced Search
  1. Select Advanced Search on the left side of the page.
  2. From the drop-down options in the first box select Subject (default is All Fields).
  3. Enter the taxonomy term, in quotes, in the search box to the right of it.
  4. Click the plus sign if you want to search this term AND additional Subjects or words in other fields, and fill out the next box(es) accordingly. Please note that the Subject field includes more than just the MHI Taxonomy terms; it also includes other indexed terms, such as Medical Subject Headings, that may be attached to each record.
  5. Click the search button.
• Basic Search Filtering
  1. Enter any words into the search box on the left side of the page and then click the search button.
  2. On the left side of the search results page will be a section labeled KEYWORD under which will be a list of terms from the MHI Taxonomy (and also some other indexed terms, such as from Medical Subject Headings) in order of occurrence. Expand the list by clicking on "More."
  3. Click on any term in that section to retrieve items that included both the original search term and the term you clicked on.

For questions about the MHI Taxonomy, contact Jenée Force, Associate Director, Archives and Special Collections, at .

Taxonomy Terms

Medical-related Terms