Welcome
Engage with original materials that illuminate the past and invite new understandings—from manuscript music and historic photographs to piano rolls, film posters, rare books, and musical artifacts.

Special Collections reading room, Mary M. Vial east room, Conservatory Library
Special collections include rare or fragile materials that may be distinctive in their size, shape, format, condition, or playback equipment. They include manuscripts (handwritten materials), drawings, prints (mechanically produced materials), photographs, moving images, sound recordings, notated music, and books. They also contain archival papers created during the activities of a person or group of people. These materials can be used as evidence for learning about the past or for making new knowledge. Depending on the needs of the reader, the items may have informational, historical, administrative, legal, evidentiary, artifactual, aesthetic, or intrinsic value.
Oberlin Conservatory Library Special Collections strengths include European treatises on music theory, organology, and music history from the 16th century to the present; 18th and 19th century American hymnals, tunebooks, and music manuals from New England and the Mid-Atlantic United States; 20th and 21st century jazz recordings across a range of media; and jazz film posters, lobby cards, festival programs, posters, sheet music, photographs, and more.
The collections cared for by our library staff are used by university and college faculty members, graduate students, historical performance interpreters, jazz artists, community builders, high school teachers and learners, Oberlin alumni, and undergraduates of all areas of study. You may request access to collection items and use them in a designated reading room in the Conservatory Library.