The British Columbia Digital Library

Digital Library Collections By Subject: Songs and Music

Scope note: This section consists of sheet music in digital facsimile, including interactive, playable formats, or text-markup format, along with facsimiles of promotional and other kinds of materials relating to music.

See also: Performing Arts.

• The Abraham Lincoln Songster. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago. Sponsored by the Illinois State Library and Participating Institutions. Part of the Abraham Lincoln Historical Digitization Project. Searchable/browsable collection of digital facsimiles of sheet music about Abraham Lincoln and downloadable audio files. Date accessed: 2002-02-09. Date added: 2002-02-10.
• African-American Sheet Music, 1850-1920: Selected from the Collections of Brown University. Washington, DC: American Memory, Library of Congress. Date accessed: 2002-02-09. Date added: 2002-02-09.
• America Singing: Nineteenth-Century Song Sheets. Washington, DC: Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress. Hosted by: American Memory, Library of Congress. Date accessed: 2002-02-09. Date added: 2002-02-09.
• Archive of Popular American Music see Digital Archive of Popular American Music.
• Band Music from the Civil War Era. Washington, DC: Music Division, Library of Congress. Hosted by: American Memory, Library of Congress. Date accessed: 2002-02-09. Date added: 2002-02-09.
• Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads. Oxford, UK: Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. "... over 30,000 ballads in several major collections. The original printed materials range from the 16th- to the 20th-Century. The Broadside Ballads project makes the digitised copies of the sheets and ballads available to the research community." The site can be searched or browsed a variety of ways, including an experimental version of the Java-based ICONCLASS system. Date accessed: 2002-02-09. Date added: 2002-02-09.
• British Columbia Sheet Music. Vancouver: Music Library, University of British Columbia Library, 2004-. Multimedia site documenting over 100 examples of sheet music about or published in BC. Contains digital facsimiles of the sheet music and audio files, along with detailed catalog records. Date accessed: 2004-05-20. Date added: 2004-05-20.
• Center for Southern African-American Music. Columbia, SC: School of Music, University of South Carolina. This research center contains an archive with a selection of digitized multimedia content, including sheet music, that you can browse by format. Date accessed: 2005-06-06. Date added: 2005-06-06.
• The Charles H. Templeton Ragtime Sheet Music Collection (Digital Library Collection, Mississippi State University Libraries). Extensive collection of sheet music in digital facsimile format and available for viewing or downloading as Adobe PDF files. Access is by music genre or theme, or works by the composer Irving Berlin.
• Chopin Early Editions. Chicago: University of Chicago Library. Summary: "When completed, the Chopin Early Editions online collection will consist of digitized images of all scores in the University of Chicago Library's Chopin collection. As of February 2003, over a third of the collection is available for viewing online. Users can search or browse the Chopin Early Editions collection via a variety of data points, including titles, genres, plate numbers, publishers and place of publication. Access to individual scores in the digital collection is also available through records in the Library's catalog with links to this Web site." Digital library software: Greenstone Digital Library. Date accessed: 2003-09-27. Date added: 2003-09-27.
• Choral Public Domain Library. A sheet music collection for choral music. Date accessed: 2006-03-06. Date added: 2006-03-06.
• Digital Archive of Popular American Music. Los Angeles, CA: Music Library, University of California at Los Angeles. Part of: Sheet Music Consortium. Summary: "The Digital Archive of Popular American Music is an initiative designed to provide access to digital versions of the sheet music, and performances of the songs now in the public domain." The digital facsimiles consist of full-colour covers and Adobe Acrobat PDF files of the music scores. Titles are drawn from the Music Library's Archive of Popular American Music research collection, fully cataloged online at the item level. The collection can be searched a variety of ways or browsed by title or date. Date accessed: 2004-04-17. Date added: 2004-04-17.
• Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music (DIAMM). University of Oxford and Royal Holloway University of London, 1998-. Summary: "The purpose of the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music (DIAMM) is to obtain and archive directly-captured digital images of European sources of medieval polyphonic music. Where there is damage that makes these sources difficult to read, levels of digital restoration are also undertaken on copies of the original images to improve legibility and scholarly access. ... The sources archived include all the fragmentary sources of polyphony up to 1550 in the UK (and almost all of these are available for study through this website); all the ‘complete’ manuscripts in the UK; a small number of important representative manuscripts from continental Europe; a significant portion of fragments 1300-1450 from Belgium, France, Italy, Germany and Spain." Date accessed: 2005-10-25. Date added: 2005-10-25.
• Digital Sheet Music Project. Columbia, SC: Music Library, University of South Carolina. This projects contains a digitized selection that you can search or browse from the more than 10,000 individual pieces of sheet music. Date accessed: 2005-06-06. Date added: 2005-06-06.
• The E. Azalia Hackley Collection: 19th & 20th Century Sheet Music of Negro Themes. Search or browse a digital facsimile collection of sheet music on by Black American composers or on Black American themes. Detroit, MI: Detroit Public Library. Date accessed: 2004-09-16. Date added: 2004-09-16.
• Fac-similé.org. A search engine for sheet music. Date accessed: 2006-03-06. Date added: 2006-03-06.
• Felix E. Grant Collection. Washington, D.C.: University of the District of Columbia. Digitized records, including radio interviews with individuals associated with jazz music by Felix Grant (1918-1993). Member of: Washington Research Libraries Consortium. Date accessed: 2004-07-08. Date added: 2004-07-08.
• Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier: The Henry Reed Collection. Washington, DC: American Folklife Center, Library of Congress. Hosted by: American Memory, Library of Congress. Date accessed: 2002-02-09. Date added: 2002-02-09.
• Gradual from Maundy Thursday to the Vigil of Pentecost: Musicological, Liturgical, and Artistic Annotations for a 16th Century Gradual. Hosted by the Claremont Colleges Digital Library. Summary: "This illuminated Renaissance manuscript, officially named "Denison Library, Perkins 4. Gradual. s. XVI," is a choir book that contains Latin text and plainsong music sung by cantors and choir at the Roman Catholic Church mass. The book was created in northern France, probably Rouen, in the early 16th century." Date accessed: 2007-09-23. Date added: 2007-09-23.
• The Great Canadian Tunebook (Compiled by Barry Taylor, Victoria, BC). Transcripts of lyrics to public domain Canadian folk songs. The MIDI sequences, which can be downloaded, are copyrighted by Barry Taylor. Date updated: 2004-04-20.
• Gutenberg: The Sheet Music Project. Part of: Gutenberg Project. Musical scores, chiefly in the public domain (out of copyright), are available for download and encoded in the MusicXML format. Special software, some of it open source, is required to work this format. Date accessed: 2006-03-06. Date added: 2006-03-06.
• Hi-Fido (High Fidelity Digitization On-line). Chicago, IL: Chicago Jazz Archive, University of Chicago Library. "Hi-Fido, a multi-media project, offers sheet music and recordings that date from jazz's beginnings in the early 1910s through Chicago Jazz's heyday in the 1920s up to the Great Depression." Date accessed: 2002-02-09. Date added: 2002-02-10.
• Historic American Sheet Music. Durham, NC: Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University. Alternate URL: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award97/ncdhtml/hasmhome.html (American Memory, Library of Congress). "The Historic American Sheet Music Project provides access to digital images of 3042 pieces from the collection, published in the United States between 1850 and 1920." Collection is browsable and searchable. Date accessed: 2002-02-09. Date added: 2002-02-09.
• Historical Anthology of Canadian Music (Canadian Musical Heritage Society and Canada's Digital Collections). Contains downloadable sheet music stored as Adobe PDF files.
• Indiana University Sheet Music. Bloomington: Indiana University, 2004-. Summary: "Sheet music is held in several repositories at Indiana University. This web site allows you to search some of the holdings from the Lilly Library's approximately 150,000 pieces of sheet music, including those for which there are digitized images available." The site also provides access to other sheet music collections such as the Sheet Music Consortium through the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) metadata harvesting protocol. Date accessed: 2004-04-17. Date added: 2004-04-17.
• Inventions of Note Sheet Music Collection. Cambridge, MA: Lewis Music Library, MIT Libraries. Summary: "...established in 1997 by the Lewis Music Library at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This sheet music collection consists of popular songs and piano compositions that portray technologies (old and new alike) as revealed through song texts and/or cover art. ... The collection contains approximately 50 pieces of sheet music owned by the Lewis Music Library. ... There are no chronological limits to this collection, although most of the holdings date from approximately 1890-1920. Only music published in the United States is included." Individual titles can be searched or browsed and downloaded as Adodbe PDF files. Date accessed: 2004-04-17.
• The Jean-Baptiste Lully Collection. Denton, TX: Music Library, University of North Texas, 1997-. Digital collection of 21 volumes of opera and ballet scores downloadable as Adobe Acrobat PDF files and background resources pertaining to French composer Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687). Date accessed: 2004-03-25. Date added: 2004-03-25.
• Kansas City Sheet Music Collection. University of Missouri Libraries. Part of: University of Missouri Digital Library. Part of: Virtually Missouri. Summary: "The Kansas City Sheet Music Collection contains over 660 titles published from 1874 to 1966. ... The collection can be searched here at the Missouri Digital Library and also via the UMKC Merlin library catalog by using the subject heading Kansas City Sheet Music Collection." Date accessed: 2005-08-27. Date added: 2005-08-27.
• Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music. Special Collections, Milton S. Eisenhower Library, Johns Hopkins University. The entire collection of 29,000 pieces of sheet music covering the years 1780 to 1960 is indexed and browsable or searchable. Only sheet music in the public domain (prior to 1923 in the U.S.) is available in digital form. Date accessed: 2002-02-09. Date added: 2002-02-09.
• The Moldenhauer Archives: The Rosaleen Moldenhauer Memorial: Music History from Primary Sources: A Guide to the Moldenhauer Archives. Washington, D.C.: American Memory, Library of Congress, 2006-. Summary: "This online presentation includes representative examples of more than 130 items from the Archives including many complete works and, as a special presentation, an electronic version of the book's text, which is intended to replace the printed edition. In addition, the book’s inventory of the Archives appears as a finding aid." Date accessed: 2006-01-23. Date added: 2006-01-23.
• Music Australia. Canberra: National Library of Australia and ScreenSound Australia, the National Screen and Sound Archive, 2002-2004 (pilot), 2004- (production). Multimedia digital collection of Australian music resources, including digitized sheet music. Date accessed: 2004-11-16. Date added: 2004-11-16.
• Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music, ca. 1820-1860. Washington, DC: Music Division, Library of Congress. Hosted by: American Memory, Library of Congress. Alternate URL for combined access to 1870-1885 sheet music: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/mussmhtml/mussmhome.html Summary: "... consists of over 15,000 pieces of sheet music registered for copyright during the years 1820 to 1860. This collection complements an earlier American Memory project, Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music 1870-1885 as well as the Band Music from the Civil War Era and Sheet Music from the Civil War Era ['We'll Sing to Abe Our Song!']." Date accessed: 2002-09-26. Date added: 2002-09-26.
• Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music, 1870-1885. Washington, DC: Music Division, Library of Congress. Hosted by: American Memory, Library of Congress. Alternate URL for combined access to ca. 1820-1860 sheet music: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/mussmhtml/mussmhome.html Summary: "... over 47,000 pieces of sheet music registered for copyright during the years 1870 to 1885. Included are popular songs, piano music, sacred and secular choral music, solo instrumental music, method books and instructional materials, and music for band and orchestra." Date accessed: 2002-02-09. Date added: 2002-02-09. Date updated: 2004-10-16.
• Music Queensland. Brisbane, Australia: State Library of Queensland, 2004-. Part of: Music Australia. Summary: "The music collection is a strength of the State Library of Queensland and the Music Queensland service makes digital copies of historically significant music scores about Queensland available through the Internet." Date accessed: 2004-11-16. Date added: 2004-11-16.
• Mutopia Project. Maintained by Chris Sawer and David Chan, 2002-. Summary: "The Mutopia Project is run by volunteers ... a place where music is free for everyone! Download it, print it out, and share it. Mutopia is similar in spirit to Project Gutenberg, but consists of free sheet music. ... All music is available as Postscript (.ps) and PDF (.pdf) files, for both A4 and Letter paper sizes, as well as Lilypond's own file format (.ly)." Alternate URLs include: http://ibiblio.org/mutopia/  and http://mutopia.planetmirror.com/ . Date accessed: 2004-11-16. Date added: 2004-11-16.
• 19th-Century American Sheet Music Digitization Project. Summary: "The 19th-Century American Sheet Music Digitization Project was funded through a one-time Instructional Technology Grant from the late Chancellor Michael Hooker. Fifty-seven volumes (approximately 2250 titles) of sheet music have been indexed. The contents of 32 of these volumes (approximately 1200 pieces) have been fully scanned and are available on this site." Individual digital facsimiles of sheet music titles in GIF format are linked from descriptive records accessed through a volume list. The alphabetical title index by composer name does not appear to include links to the digital facsimiles. Date accessed: 2004-04-17. Date added: 2004-04-17.
• 19th-Century California Sheet Music. Mary Kay Duggan. Berkeley, California: University of California, Berkeley. Alternate title: California Sheet Music Project. "A virtual library of some 2,000 pieces of sheet music published in California between 1852 and 1900, together with related materials such as a San Francisco publisher's catalog of 1872, programs, songsheets, advertisements, and photographs." Search for bibliographic information describing digital facsimiles of sheet music published in California. The facsimiles are retrieved with the bibliographic record. Date accessed: 2002-02-09. Date added: 2002-02-09.
• Original Literature of Vintage Mechanical Musical Instruments. Winnipeg, Manitoba: Terry Smythe. Consists of digital facsimiles of promotional literature and other kinds of documentation relating to historical musical instruments. Date accessed: 2008-01-11. Date added: 2008-01-11.
• Pacific Northwest Sheet Music Collection. Seattle, WA: Music Library, University of Washington, 2004-. Public domain digital facsimiles of sheet music from the Ashford Sheet Music Collection. The digitized titles can also be accessed through a bibliographic database to the Ashford Sheet Music Collection (http://db.lib.washington.edu/sheetmusic/). The digital collection is managed with CONTENTdm. Date accessed: 2004-11-23. Date added: 2004-11-23.
• Parlor Songs: Popular Sheet Music from the 1800s to the 1920s. Kingston, Washington: Parlor Songs Association, Inc. Founded in 2003 by Robert Maine and Richard A. Reublin, who combined their personal collections of sheet music, this site consists of an interactive magazine with links to digitized, playable sheet music that is in the public domain in the United States and elsewhere. Scorch, a free Web browser plugin, must be downloaded to hear the scores which are played as MIDI files. Date accessed: 2004-04-17. Date added: 2004-04-17.
• Performing Arts in America, 1875-1923. New York, NY: Digital Library Collections, New York Public Library, 2001. Multimedia digital collection on the subject of performance arts in the United States. Includes sheet music. The collection can be searched or browsed by format, name, title, or subject. Date accessed: 2004-04-17. Date added: 2004-04-17.
• The Piano Bench Collection. Auburn, AL: Auburn University Digital Library. Summary: "The Piano Bench Collection is a collection of sheet music published before 1923. The musical content of the collection consists primarily of American popular songs and piano music. The majority of the items are from the collection of Fred Edmiston, a former librarian at the Auburn University Libraries." Date accessed: 2007-04-08. Date added: 2007-04-08.
• Popular American Music see Digital Archive of Popular American Music.
• Sheet Music Consortium. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Digital Library Program (host), 2004-. Consortium members as of 2004-04-17: University of California Los Angeles, Indiana University, Johns Hopkins University, and Duke University. Summary: "The Sheet Music Consortium is a group of libraries working toward the goal of building an open collection of digitized sheet music using the Open Archives Initiative:Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI:PMH). Harvested metadata about sheet music in participating collections is hosted by UCLA Digital Library Program, which provides an access service via this metadata to sheet music records at the host libraries." Includes links to other sheet music collections on the Web. Date accessed: 2004-04-17. Date added: 2004-04-17.
• Sheet Music from Canada's Past (Library and Archives Canada). Searchable/browsable collection of selected sheet music in Adobe PDF files. Date updated: 2004-04-19.
• SibeliusMusic, The Largest Collection of New Scores on the Web. Browse or search for digitized music scores, including classical pieces, that can be purchased or played online through the free Scorch Web browser plugin. Date accessed: 2004-04-17. Date added: 2004-04-17.
• Stephen Foster's Sketchbook. Pittsburgh, PA: Digital Research Library, University of Pittsburgh. A searchable digitized version of a sketchbook by American composer Stephen Foster (1826-1864). Date accessed: 2005-10-25. Date added: 2005-10-25.
• University of Colorado Digital Sheet Music Collection. Boulder: Music Library, University Libraries, University of Colorado at Boulder, c2001-. Browse or search selected digital facsimiles of sheet music. Date accessed: 2004-04-17. Date added: 2004-04-17. Date updated: 2005-10-09.
• Victorian Popular Music. London, UK: British Library, 2004-. Part of: Collect Britain: Putting History in Its Place. Alternate title: Sing Along! Summary: "Illustrated sheet music from the heyday of the Music Hall. Leaf through 188 songs and piano pieces to discover an entertaining sidelight on Victorian society." Date accessed: 2004-10-16. Date added: 2004-10-16.
• "We'll Sing to Abe Our Song!": Sheet Music about Lincoln, Emancipation, and the Civil War from the Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana. Washington, DC: Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress. Hosted by: American Memory, Library of Congress. Date accessed: 2002-02-09. Date added: 2002-02-09.
• Werner Icking Music Archive. Hosted by The Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus, Denmark. Continues: GMD Music Archive. Includes sheet music and many other music-related Internet resources, as well as a large links list to other free sheet music archives. Date accessed: 2006-03-06. Date added: 2006-03-06.
• Women Hymn Composers before 1900. Maintained by Donald McKillican. Hosted by Sympatico.ca. Includes biographical information and digital facsimiles of compositions. If the composer died prior to 1930, the full text is available, otherwise only the first line or two is reproduced. Date accessed: 2002-02-09. Date added: 2002-02-09.

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