Collections

The Library of Congress is home to one of the world's preeminent music collections. With over 25 million items in its custody, the Music Division preserves and provides access to general music collections comprised of musical scores, instructional books, and music literature, as well as special collections that include the personal papers of notable creative artists, the business papers of publishers and artistic foundations, and more. Researchers of many backgrounds and disciplines travel from around the world to study the Library’s music collections from an endless array of perspectives: historians and documentarians, performers and artists, scholars and students, music enthusiasts, and others.

In addition to its extraordinary on-site collections, the Performing Arts Reading Room offers researchers access to a constantly growing body of electronic resources. Many of these resources are freely available online, including the Music Division’s digital collections, curated web archives, and open-access online resources. Additional subscription databases are only accessible in the Performing Arts Reading Room or elsewhere on the Library of Congress campus.

  • Digital Collections The Music Division is dedicated to continually increasing online access to its unique collection material through its digital collections. Through these digital collections, researchers are able to download scans of an incredible array of materials ranging from Medieval chant manuscripts, to manuscript and first edition scores by the most revered composers of the classical music canon, to tens of thousands of pieces of historic...
  • Web Archives The research guide Performing Arts Web Archives at the Library of Congress describes digital collections of web archives related to the performing arts, how to navigate the collections, potential research questions, and how web archives relate to Music Division holdings. Web archives are rich resources that can be used to research, understand, explore, and document the performing arts in the 20th and 21st centuries....
  • Virtual Exhibits Many Library of Congress Online Exhibits feature material from the Music Division’s collections. The list below connects researchers with select virtual exhibits curated by Music Division staff that remain available on the Library’s website via the Exhibits Office.