The Library of Congress has created this delightful site that brings together hundreds of items that tell of the musical culture of the American Civil War. First-time visitors will want to start by perusing the Civil War Sheet Music section. Here they will find 2,500 pieces culled from the Library's collection, including songs about various generals, battles, and a longing for the tranquility of...

As the United States continues to explore the legacy of the Civil War, this timely collection adds to the conversation. The University of Alabama Libraries Digital Collection has created this collection of printed music created between 1861 and 1865 in the Confederacy. During its short-lived existence, the Confederacy produced more than 7,000 books, pamphlets, broadsides, maps, pieces of sheet...

Based out of Milwaukee, the Ward Irish Music Archives were established in 1992 and is dedicated to the preservation of Irish and Irish-American music in all of its forms. Visitors to this remarkable site can browse over 5,000 pieces of Irish and Irish-American sheet music. While some of these ditties are not in the public domain, the collection can be narrowed down by filtering for only publicly...

For those who love everything from Sousa to show tunes, the Sheet Music Consortium is a fabulous find. The Consortium is comprised of a number of member libraries (including UCLA) who are interested in building "an open collection of digitized sheet music." Their work has been supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and currently offers cross collection searching of 22 sheet...

Based at the Mills Music Library at the University of Wisconsin, the American Sheet Music Collection contains thousands of pieces of sheet music published in the United States before 1900. Many of these items came to the library as gifts, including a significant group of publications that once belonged to composer/publisher Joseph P. Webster. The musical genres included here are impressive, and...

With a dramatic geological flourish, the cover of the music for the 1890 song, "Alice's reverie" features an exploding volcano. Interestingly enough, the volcano is not spewing forth lava or ash, but rather what appears to be sheet music, direct to the waiting hands of delighted onlookers. This sheet music for this tune, along with 9000 others, can be found at this website, which was created by...