Historic Sheet Music from Indiana Now Available Freely Online!

HISTORIC SHEET MUSIC FROM INDIANA NOW FREELY AVAILABLE ONLINE

Information courtesy of Indiana University Media Relations Release

IN Harmony, a collaboration between Indiana University 's Lilly Library, the Indiana State Museum , the Indiana Historical Society, Indiana State Library, and the IU Digital Library Program, has made freely available online more than 10,000 pieces of Indiana-related sheet music. The IN Harmony website gives users access to some of these institutions’ most popular and sought-after materials, as well as images of music and cover art for non-commercial personal use. Beyond the site’s current collection, more than 150,000 additional items from the Lilly Library sheet music collection will be systematically added in an ongoing project.

The IN Harmony collection features sheet music by Indiana composers, lyricists, arrangers, and publishers, as well as sheet music about the state. Drawn primarily from the late-19th and early-20th centuries, the collection includes works by well-known composers such as George M. Cohan, Cole Porter, Al Jolson and Jerome Kern. The Indiana State Library’s contribution to the collection includes approximately 1,600 pieces of sheet music, dating from 1840 through the 1960s, the bulk of which date from 1890 through 1950. The collection includes a wide variety of pieces: "booster" songs promoting a particular city or railroad stop; centennial songs from state, county and city celebrations; religious works, college songs; and songs based on the literary works of well-known authors such as James Whitcomb Riley.

IU’s Digital Library Program led the effort to show how collections of disparate organizations could be described and organized.

"Libraries and museums often have different needs, and this project showed how to cross institutional boundaries to the benefit of not only residents of our own state, but to music-lovers throughout the country and even beyond," said Patricia Steele, Ruth Lilly Dean of University Libraries.

The three-year project was funded in part by a $343,437 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.