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...

The Inventions of Note Sheet Music Collection was created in 1997 by the Lewis Music Library at MIT. It includes popular songs and piano compositions that portray technologies as revealed through song texts and cover art. As the introductory notes state, "The initial appearance of inventions such as the automobile, airplane, radio, and telephone created a myriad of responses in American society...

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...

Whether you love the songs of the 1910s or more recent fare, this fascinating sheet music collection from the Library of Congress is a real find. The database includes "hits and flops" from famous Tin Pan Alley songwriters like Irving Berlin, along with manuscript materials from amateur composers. All told, this database contains materials from over 18,000 shows and productions from the 1690s to...

The Petrucci Music Library is an essential database for musicians, music librarians and teachers, as well as lovers of classical music. The online collection shares public domain music via a searchable interface. On the main page, visitors may search for works by composer (or composer's nationality), genre, time period, or melody. Searching by melody is particularly interesting, as it launches an...

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...

Sheldon Harris was an avid record collector, and he began his collection as a young man growing up in Brooklyn. During his life, he also served as the blues editor of "Jazz & Pop Magazine", and also found time to publish an important biographical dictionary of blues singers and an oral history of jazz as told by jazz trombonist and blues singer, Clyde E.B. Bernhardt. This particular digital sheet...

Over the past few years, more and more university libraries have worked diligently to digitize some of their vast sheet music holdings. Old chestnuts are being revived by vocal groups on campus and farther afield, which is certainly a good thing. This sheet music collection from the Temple University Libraries brings together 850 pieces of music for consideration by the general public. Visitors...

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...

Housed at the Gonzaga University Libraries, the Howard W. and Nancy A. Wildin Music Collection contains over 20,000 pieces of original popular sheet music. The collection's items date back to the mid-19th century, and there are complete song folios within, along with materials created for specific theater and dance productions. Currently, there are over 200 items here, including "All Aboard for...