Guitar societies have often played a significant role in laying the groundwork for historical and biographical research, because they so often publish news of their activities—the concerts and festivals they sponsor, etc.—in newsletters and magazines. Nowadays they also frequently create Web sites, where one can read about which guitarists are performing or have performed where, what they played, and so forth.

Today there are hundreds of guitar societies doing the important work of concert/festival sponsorship and reportage. Most of them are city-based and well represented online. A Google search of "guitar society" recently brought back over 75,000 Web pages; a search of "classical guitar society" retrieved over 25,000 pages.

One of the best international indexes to the various guitar societies' home pages on the Internet is maintained at this GFA Web site, under "Connections —> Guitar Societies." It can be searched by country or by state/province. Additionally the entire GFA Web site can be key-word searched (using the box in the upper right corner) by city. Thus a key-word search of "Dallas" brings up two guitar societies: the Allegro Guitar Society of Dallas and Flamenco Dallas.

Magazines and journals aimed at furthering interest specifically in the guitar have been in existence since the 1830s. The first, The Giulianiad (1833-35), was named in honor of Mauro Giuliani (1781-1829) and published by such London-based guitar personalities as Ferdinand Pelzer and Felix Horetzky. The only known copy of that work is at the British Library, but the Italian scholarly guitar journal il 'Fronimo' published an Italian translation of it with a few music facsimiles included, in installments starting as a supplement to issue no. 105 (Jan. 1999- ) and continuing irregularly at least through issue no. 115 (July 2001).

A good example of how periodicals can serve as source material for the history of the guitar is found in Jeffrey Noonan's doctoral thesis, "The Guitar in America as Reflected in Topical Periodicals, 1882-1933" (Washington Univ., 2004). Among its indexes is "Guitar music published in the BMG periodicals," 639-701.

With the online access to cataloging information about guitar magazines that is available today, it has become easy to generate a very large checklist of periodicals devoted to the guitar. For example, one can access the advanced search page of WorldCat online, do a Subject search of "guitar--periodicals," and retrieve about 200 samples of online cataloging of guitar periodicals done by the largest network of libraries in the world, OCLC—surely a good starting point. The list of more or less serious classic guitar magazines that appears below, based largely on OCLC records. Thanks also to Marco Bazzotti and his colleagues for Italian periodical coverage given at the site justclassicalguitar.com.) These references may be of use especially to those researching the social history of the guitar, or curious about its popularity. But please remember, when dealing with guitar magazines, that:

1. Most of them have been personality-driven rather than sponsored by a society. They have rarely outlasted their founding editors, whose personal preferences are usually evident in the tone of the periodical. A delightful example of such a magazine, now seemingly impossible to locate as a complete run in any library, is the once widely-read Guitar News, edited by Wilfrid Appleby (Cheltenham, UK, 1951-ca.1978?). A more idiosyncratic example would be Chelys (1976-79), edited by Walter Spalding.
2. Only one guitar periodical so far lays claim to being refereed: Guitar Forum (2001-); all the rest have (or have had) unique editors as gatekeepers.
3. Most guitar magazines, starting with The Giulianiad, have included pieces of guitar music (notation) along with articles and news. Dorman Smith and Laurie Eagleson undertook to index many of the pieces hidden away in these journals with their publication, Guitar and lute music in periodicals: an index (Berkeley, CA: Fallen Leaf Press, 1990)—a work long out of print but still useful for the older periodicals.
4. The Internet appears to be rapidly surpassing printed periodicals as the everyday "go to" place for news, and at times even for substantive historical studies. See the Guitar Forums & Discussion Groups Online page for an orientation to serious guitar-research-related developments on the world-wide Web.

Titles are listed in chronological order by the date of the first issue. The guitar magazines still being published today are coded in blue below.

Visitors are invited to send suggestions for additions and corrections to Thomas F. Heck.