The music collection consists of music books, scores, and periodicals. In general, these materials cover basic music history, theory and analysis, and aspects of performance. Strengths of the collection include studies of North American indigenous and vernacular styles, such as jazz, blues, country, folk and popular music, and 20th century art music, including marginal new music styles and electroacoustic music. Periodicals reflect both scholarly and ephemeral or popular sources. The score collection is made up of study scores of individual works, collected editions of selected composers, and collections of music representing various genres, such as musical theatre, folk music, and popular music.
Every attempt is made to correlate score purchases with sound recording purchases.
The collection development policy for the Sound Recordings completes coverage of the music collections. Music reference items are covered by the collection development policy for general reference , in conjunction with this policy. Languages The history of western music is represented by mostly English language materials with seminal works in other languages such as French, German and Italian also being acquired. Materials for jazz and ethnomusicology are selectively acquired in all European languages. Geographical Coverage Materials are collected regardless of their country of origin.