Music Library collections
About the Music Library collections
History and scope
Founded in 1947 as a branch of the University Library, the Music Library was located on the second floor of Morrison Hall from 1957 until July 6, 2004, when the Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library opened to the public. Its collections today contain some 200,000 volumes of books and printed music, 50,000 sound and video recordings, and 30,000 microforms in addition to extensive special holdings of manuscripts, rare materials, and archives. The collection serves the diverse teaching and research needs of the UC Berkeley Department of Music, which offers a general undergraduate major and graduate programs in musicology, ethnomusicology, and composition, as well as embracing a variety of performance activities.
Special collections
The Music Library houses its own special collections and archives ranging from early medieval European manuscripts to the records of 21st century composers. The archival collections focus on the history of music in the Bay Area. Archival finding aids in the Online Archive of California describe the collections and their contents. Manuscript holdings are partially described in the RISM A/II database and in two published catalogs available in print and online: Catalog of pre-1900 vocal manuscripts in the Music Library, University of California at Berkeley and Thematic catalog of a manuscript collection of eighteenth-century Italian instrumental music in the University of California, Berkeley, Music Library.