Music

Audio Collections | Print Collections | Online

Overview of Music Collections

The Buffalo & Erie County Public Library houses one of the oldest and most distinguished collections of scores, sheet music, audio, and books relating to music in North America. For over 100 years, librarians have carefully acquired materials with an eye to serving the needs of the performing and listening communities.

The current holdings comprise the collections of two libraries, one from the Grosvenor Library Music Department, established in 1898, and the other from the Buffalo Public Library Music Department, established in 1922.

The collection contains materials that cover over 2,000 years of musical history. Included are anthologies, scores, complete collected works of many composers, over 300,000 song titles from the late 18th century to the present, a vast collection of recordings including compact discs, cassettes, vinyl LPs, and 78’s, reference materials, journals and periodicals, several thousand books on music encompassing subjects such as biography, music history and theory, instruction manuals and the business of music. The library also houses a small collection of local historical documents of major musical cultural institutions in the form of scrapbooks, programs and ledgers. Tours are available on request.