Technology has increased the opportunity for cooperation among institutions, from sharing on-line catalogs so that locating specific items becomes easier, to dividing responsibilities for collecting certain materials. The printed music collection is often considered the heart of the music library, and it poses problems peculiar to itself. One is the selection of appropriate editions of a work out the many available, a problem with a scope beyond that of the general collection. Editorial policy must be examined, and physical properties of each edition must be taken into consideration. In addition to printed music and books about music, with which many librarians feel fairly comfortable, music libraries should stock a reasonable collection of recorded material.
Popular music is often available only in recorded form.
Lately, however, the growing number of researchers who study this music is causing a reassessment. Local involvement includes not only acquiring items created by area groups, but also being familiar with community music preferences and emphasizing those when selecting materials. Music provides a good way for community outreach in other ways as well. This sort of publicity may serve to increase the percentage of the public that realizes that the library has more to offer than is suggested by its stereotypical image of a storehouse of books. We can see that music librarianship is not an activity that simply looks back at the past, but it looks outwards to the community and forwards to the future needs of library patrons.