Music Collection Policy

The music library collects books, periodicals, scores, sound recordings, video recordings, and other electronic formats that support the teaching, learning, and research needs of our users. Books and scores collected include single titles, anthologies, and monographic series (e.g., SOAS Musical Series, The Kurt Weill Edition, etc.) and reference works (e.g., dictionaries, encyclopedias, research guides, etc.). Juvenile literature, textbooks, and scores with choral, orchestral, or band parts are excluded.

Books, Monographs, periodicals, librettos, indexes and abstracts, bibliographies and other standard reference sources and secondary literature of music are primarily purchased in print form but consideration is given when digital texts are available.  Score editions included critical, performance, and study and may be full, miniature, or vocal scores. The preferred sound recording format is compact disc and/or streaming; the preferred video recording format is DVD and/or streaming. Records, cassette tapes, VHS are not preferred formats and are selected on a case-by-case basis.