Support the Library

The generosity of our friends plays a vital role in supporting our exciting new digital technologies (including streaming audio and video) and the purchase of essential books, scores, periodicals, and recordings. A Music/Dance Library Endowment Fund was established in 2006 to help the Library maintain its position as one of the largest and finest collections of its kind. A Builders Fund was established in 2009, to help meet current needs. To learn how you can help, phone us at 614-688-0163. 

One hundred percent of your donation goes to help our Library; no part of a gift is used for administrative costs.

To make an immediate gift by credit card, click here to use our secure server. 

OSU faculty/staff may contribute through the annual Campus Campaign — designate fund 480173.

The Ohio State University Music/Dance Library supports the teaching, research, and performance areas of the School of Music and the Department of Dance. The Library's collections and facilities are open to all OSU students, faculty, and staff, and the community at large. 

Gifts to the library may take the form of bequests made through a will, deferred gifts that provide you with a life income and then benefit the Music/Dance Library, gifts of cash, marketable securities, life insurance, real property, or retirement plan assets. Bequests provide a way for you to memorialize your dedication to the Music/Dance Library and its mission.

Gifts of life insurance may be made in the form of a new policy or an existing policy. Premiums paid by the donor on a donated life insurance policy may qualify for tax deductions. If you currently own a policy that is paid in full, you may donate it.

Gifts of retirement plan assets can be arranged by naming the Music/Dance Library a beneficiary on your retirement plan or IRA. This option can result in estate or inheritance tax savings.

Life income gifts can be made through charitable trusts and charitable gift annuities. These arrangements may result in income and estate tax savings while providing an annual income to you, your family, or others.

Many employers will match employees' gifts to the Music/Dance Library. The beneficial effect of your gift may be doubled or possibly tripled. Some companies match gifts made by retirees or spouses.

Planned giving lets you make gifts of assets during your lifetime or through a will or testamentary instrument. Such gifts can provide enhanced tax benefits, and may return an income to the donor. And it is possible to achieve tax benefits by deeding a home to the Library while continuing to occupy the property for life. For further information, see Ways To Give.

The Library's collections include approximately 80,000 disc and tape recordings, 130,000 books and scores, 12,000 serials, 5,600 microfilms, and a large collection of DVD and VHS videos. In addition, the Library houses the former WOSU-FM collection of approximately 22,500 vinyl LPs of classical, jazz, and operatic works, and the American Broadcasting Company collection of approximately 16,000 pieces of popular sheet music from the early 20th century to the 1950s. The Library also contains a Nordic Music Archive of contemporary Scandinavian scores and recordings. It receives every year from several music publishers in the five Nordic countries gifts of scores, books, and recordings which the Library in turn catalogs and uploads to the OCLC worldwide database. The Nordic Music Archive comprises approximately 2,300 scores and 2,000 recordings.

The general collections include biographies, histories, theoretical and reference works about music and dance, periodical and serial sets, music theses and dissertations, recital recordings, and a large variety of materials on music and dance topics from ancient times to the present. The score collections contain not only scholarly editions of the complete works of all the major composers but also a wide range of practical editions of vocal and instrumental music. Special research materials include microforms of music manuscripts and early prints, and music dissertations from other universities in the United States and abroad. The Library owns a set of the Deutsches Musikgeschichtliches Archiv microfilms that reproduce thousands of documents in Renaissance and early Baroque music found chiefly in German libraries. And the Library owns more than five hundred music dictionaries dating from 1495 to the present.

Online specialized databases include Music Index, RILM, RIPM, International Index to Music Periodicals, International Index to Performing Arts, and Grove/Oxford Online, together with hundreds of general-interest databases and online journals, many of them full-text. Also available are such streaming audio and video resources as DRAM (complete liner notes and essays from New World Records, Composers Recordings, Inc. and other labels), Dance in Video, American Song, Classical Music Library, Jazz Music Library, Contemporary World Music, Smithsonian Global Sound, and the classical and jazz Naxos Music Libraries. Naxos offers more than 140,000 tracks from some 9,000 CDs and 7,000 composers and from other labels than Naxos' own.

The Library is proudly serving as the central editorial office for an exciting music iconography database project. The Répertoire International d'Iconographie Musicale (RIdIM) is a worldwide effort to identify and catalog art works that feature musical images such as instruments, performers, composers, and events. Library staff involved in the project include librarians Alan Green (Project Coordinator) and Sean Ferguson (Editor-in-Chief), and cataloger Gretchen Atkinson. In addition, numerous School of Music graduate students have contributed their time and skills, especially Bria Parker, Ursula Crosslin, and Alison Furlong. The RIdIM database will eventually be available for free searching on the Web. For information, contact Sean Ferguson at 614-292-2319 or ferguson.36@osu.edu.

Music has been an integral part of The Ohio State University from its earliest years. The Men's Glee Club dates from 1873, and the University Band from 1879. Music courses were first offered in 1908, and dance courses in 1923. The Music Library was organized in 1946, moved to Sullivant Hall in 1975, and moved to 175 West 18th Avenue in 2011.

Materials for the music and dance collections are purchased primarily through general funds from OSU Libraries. The Music/Dance Library receives additional funding from the Friends of the Libraries.