UCSB Music Collections and Services

UCSB Music Collections and Services

General Information

The music collections, housed on the second floor of the Arts Library, comprise books about music (ML or MT classes); scores (M class); sound recordings and videorecordings; and a large microform collection of manuscripts, early editions, journals, and dissertations. (Music materials are also held elsewhere in the UCSB Library; when using PEGASUS, the online library catalog, please note the location code of the item you seek.) Music staff provide a range of reference services, from helping library patrons find brief, factual information to in-depth consultations on research strategies. Other music services include approved taping, scheduled tours, and training for music-related searching in electronic indexes and databases.

Books and Scores

Books, periodicals, and scores are available on open stacks and circulate through the Arts Library Circulation Desk on the first floor, following the same rules and procedures that govern circulating materials in the Davidson Library. Reference books, composers' collected editions, and other selected printed materials do not circulate.

Recordings

Recordings are housed in a closed-stack area and are paged for in-house listening by Music Service Desk personnel on the second floor of the Arts Library. The collection includes LPs, compact discs, open-reel and cassette tapes, and videocassettes and laserdiscs. Listening facilities include headphone stations, individual and group listening rooms, seminar rooms, and a video room. Recordings do not circulate, but are available for in-class use under some circumstances. The taping of library recordings by patrons is not allowed. Please speak to a Music Service Desk supervisor for further information.

Catalog Access

Bibliographic access to the music collections is provided through the PEGASUS and MELVYL (telnet or Web) catalogs, which can be accessed on campus or via the Internet from remote locations. (For information on remote access, please see the library handout "PEGASUS/California Digital Library Remote Access.") In addition, the UCSB Library Music Subject Page provides access to selected music-related Web resources.

Uncataloged Collections

Uncataloged collections of music materials include:

Music Department Performance Tapes (MDT's):
Archived tapes of selected faculty and student recitals are available for listening in the Arts Library. Ask at the Music Service Desk.
Music Pamphlet Files:
This collection consists of music flyers, bulletins, newsletters, and announcements of current and historical interest, arranged in the following separate files:

I. Composers. Works lists and announcements of forthcoming publications.

II. General Pamphlets. Announcements of music festivals and workshops; concert programs; copyright flyers; information about individual performers, instruments, instrument makers, libraries and their special collections--a vast miscellany.

III. Newsletters. News flyers published by music associations and organizations of all types.

IV. Opera Librettos. A large collection of libretto pamphlets; most are from American opera houses of the first half of the twentieth century.

V. Series. Publishers' announcements of past, current, and forthcoming music sets and series. Lists of projected and published volumes often include contents.

Special Collections Department

Among the holdings of the Performing Arts Collections, administered by the Davidson Library Special Collections Department, are significant music research materials, including one of the largest archives of historical sound recordings in the United States, and the papers of film composer Bernard Herrmann, singer and teacher Lotte Lehmann, and composer Peter Racine Fricker.

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Author: Temmo Korisheli
Last modified January 12, 2000.

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