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Music Collections

San José Public Library's extensive music holdings at the King Library include the five collections described below. You can select a collection below in order to search it for a particular title, composer or lyricist. You can also search All Collections simultaneously by Title using the search box above. Note: This is an online index to most of the Library's print music holdings and does not include digital images or full text of the materials cited.

What do you do when you find what you want? Residents of California's South Bay Area are invited to pay an in-person visit to the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library to make a photocopy. Those who reside outside the library's primary service area may contact their city's local library to request a photocopy through Interlibrary Loan. San José Public Library does not lend music nor mail or fax copies to individuals from these collections. You can also find additional sheet music to borrow through the Library Catalog

• Choral Music Collection -- sheet music for different voice ranges. This collection contains 17,000 titles and is housed in the California Room archives on the 5th Floor. Items may be requested during open hours.
   
• Magazine Music Collection -- includes bound volumes of Sheet Music Magazine and Sing Out! Magazine. This collection is located in the Ready Reference section on the 2nd Floor, near the Adaptive Technology Center.
   
• Sheet Music Collection -- a collection of popular songs from the late nineteenth century to the 1960s which was donated to the library. It contains 18,000 titles and is housed in the California Room archives on the 5th Floor. Items may be requested during open hours.
   
• Songs/Songbooks Collection -- a continuing collection which contains a wide variety of music with an emphasis on popular music from the 1970s on. It presently includes over 500 songbooks with 22,347 titles. These songbooks are shelved in the Ready Reference section on the 2nd Floor, near the Adaptive Technology Center. Songbooks are filed in numerical order according to the accession number typed on the orange dot on spine of each songbook.
   
• Stock Music Collection -- another donated collection consists mostly of big band music from 1878 to 1967 with parts for different band instruments. The 6,100 titles are housed in the California Room archives on the 5th Floor. Items may be requested during open hours.