Today’s Hours:

All Hours & Directions

Terrell Main Library

10am - 12am

Terrell Fourth Floor

10am - 12am

Circulation Desk

10am - 12am

Research Help Desk

Closed

Terrell Research Help Desk (Semester Evening)

Closed

Libraries Administrative Office

Closed

Azariah's Cafe

10am - 4pm

Directions:

Location:

Mary Church Terrell Main Library
148 W College St. Oberlin, OH 44074-1545

Parking:

The main visitor lot is the east Service Building lot, and the south row of the Carnegie Building lot for visitors to offices within that building.

Terrell Main Library Floor Plans

Floor Plans

Other Libraries Hours & Directions

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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.

View of the Conservatory Special Collections reading room through glass walls showing tables, chairs, and separate listening rooms.

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.