Rare Books & Manuscripts

With over twenty thousand pieces of  sheet music, the Historic Music Collections track the development of popular music in the United States from the end of the nineteenth century to the latter half of the twentieth century.    While the sheet music is available for research purposes to anyone, only music that has passed out of copyright can be provided for performance by Special Collections.

• C. Weir Kirk performed music in private and public venues in Terre Haute for decades.  After his death, his family gathered the sheet music he had accumulated and presented it to Indiana State University in 1985.  In 1988, it was moved to Special Collections, and the department has received two further gifts from Mr. Kirk’s family.
• In 2008, the Wilmette Historical Museum, located in Chicago, donated 817 primarily early twentieth-century dance band sets.  As is the case with already held dance band sets, many of them are missing parts. Some of the music is two-sided, containing more than one tune.
• The Conrady Collection was donated by its collector, Denis A. Conrady, in September 2009. It contains approximately 2,200 specimens, including popular sheet music and barbershop quartet sheet music. Coverage is mainly from the 1920s through the 1970s, but with the greatest concentration in the 1940s and 1950s. The style of music is varied as are the artists. Most of the music has cover art.
• Emily Smith donated a collection of large format works from the early days of Irving Berlin’s songwriting and music publishing career. 
• Special Collections also holds smaller collections of sheet music donations, including those by Maize Jane Elliott, Paul Hagan, Lou Petrulis and Evelyn R. Vaught.

Special Collections provides multiple avenues for the exploration of these collections.  Not all of them can be reached through the main library database or the Shadows of the Wabash collection of digital resources.  We are constantly working to expand your means of gaining access.  For this collection:

• Finding aids for the Kirk Collection of Sheet Music can be found through the Shadows of the Wabash digital depository.
• Special Collections staff can be contacted through e-mail, phone, or LibChat to assist with research and make appointments to use the collection.

Ready to see this collection for yourself? You can come visit us on the 3rd floor of the library, call us at 237-2610,

or e-mail us at Special-Collections@indstate.edu.