About the Library's Collections

Music Collection

The Music collection in Little Library serves undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and staff of the School of Music and the University community as a whole.  Services are provided to others in the community, including private citizens, music organizations, and students and faculty from other educational institutions.

The collection consists of over 49,000 books and scores, 7,000 microforms, and 16,500 sound and video recordings (which are housed in the Media Center section of the Little Library). There are also 252 current periodical subscriptions. A number of electronic resources are also available. The emphasis of the collection is on the history, literature, theory, and performance of Western music. Other important emphases of the collection include jazz, non-Western music, and Appalachian music.  

The Library houses the Glenn and Helen Wilcox Collection, a collection of over 5,000 18th-20th century American hymnals, the Charles Faber Collection of rare early country music recordings, and the John Lair Collection, the personal musicology research collection of the famed founder of the Renfro Valley Barn Dance. 

Collections of music materials are also housed in Special Collections. These include the Alfred Cortot Collection of early treatises in music theory; the John Jacob Niles Collection containing music, books, and papers of the noted folk song collector and composer; a collection of Appalachian music and recordings;and a growing collection of sheet music from the 19th and early 20th centuries.