During the fall of 1964 work was done under the direction of Dean William Hooper of the School of Music toward making the Martin Music Library a reality. It was then that the holdings were transferred from the John T. Christian Library to a new location in the E. O. Sellers Music Building. The new music library contained facilities for individual and multiple listening, recordings, tapes, and a microfilm reader. By 1966, the collection had grown to include:
2,110 books
776 bound periodicals
840 reference (books and scores)
1,429 performance and study scores
6,500 (approx. anthems)
819 recordings
57microforms
Emphasis in the new library was placed upon "church music and recordings, especially in the field of oratorio, cantata, anthems, and solos." By the late 1970s, the Martin Music Library collection began to outgrow the facilities available in the E. O. Sellers building. In 1983 it was transferred to the second floor of the new North Wing of the John T. Christian Library in order to better accommodate an expanding center, greater office needs, an expanding collection, and to better serve the students. The oldest holdings date from the early 17th century. Martin Music Library also provides microfilm access to many primary source documents.
The present collection includes almost 80,000 items. This does NOT include the choral library or resource lab which are located in the music building):
A new addition to the Martin Music Library resources is the Online Center for Hymnological Research (CHR), an online digital archive of the rare hymnals in the music library collection. Dr. Ed Steele has been the project manager and coordinator of this endeavor. This on-going project provides PDFs of these rare documents for your perusal and research.
