20th and 21st century composers: primary sources and documentation

So you're searching for information on a composer, possibly a living composer, and you can't find much if anything in Grove (Oxford Music Online), what next?

• does the composer have a website? 
• does the composer teach at a university? 
• are reviews available either openly on the web or through various newspapers or journals?
  • New York Times (2015-present)
  • check FSU's OneSearch for full text of various online resources -- if a popular composer, do a subject search in the library catalog to see if books have been written on the composer
• what's available on Wikipedia (and who made it available?)?
• what's available on YouTube, Vimeo, and other resources (and again, who made it available?)?
• is this composer still alive? Obituaries are often available in the newspaper of record (e.g., New York Times), professional publications, electronic interest lists, Find-A-Grave, and Legacy.com
• are the composer's papers/collection held at a particular library or institution? Hint: use the Google search extension site:.edu, site:.gov, or site:.org to help limit the search.
  • National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections can be of some help
• are the composer's recordings represented in various online streaming databases (including DRAM) that may have liner notes available? 
• are the composer's recordings available from another library (search WorldCat)?
• are the composer's recordings available through SoundCloud or some other service?

Resources for gaining perspective and/or historical/social context of a given era, decade, movement:

• Oxford Bibliographies
  • A resource to get you to quality resources in a variety of subject areas
• Oxford Art Online
  • a sister resource to Oxford Music Online
• Oxford Handbooks Online: Philosophy

What did we do before RILM and Music Index?

• Reader's Guide 1890-1982 
  • Indexes periodical literature on all subjects
• Essay and General Literature Index

A super secret librarian tool or two

• Library of Congress Authority File
  • Particularly helpful to verify name spellings and variants (particularly for those names originating in a non-Roman alphabet)
  • Look for the "authorized heading" entry to get the full list of spelling variants
  • Can be helpful to track down dates or to find basic biographical information sources.
  • Birth/death dates are not available for each name because of the guidelines for establishing the authoritative form of a name, and how those guidelines have changed over time.
    • For example, no birth date is needed for this entry, because no other person with the same name has works published and cataloged at participating libraries.
    • Other unique names may have dates because guidelines or practices have changed.
• VIAF (Virtual International Authority File)
  • Same notion as the LC authority file, but across the world. Ustvolskaya example below:
  •