The Early Development of American Music Libraries Serving Academic Departments of Music

The development of music libraries serving academic departments of music was intertwined with the post-World War II expansion of musicology as a field of study in American higher education. The influx in the 1930s of emigre scholars from European centers where the discipline of musicology was already established provided a critical Ímpetus for the development of numerous academic music departments in the United States. In turn, the reliance of musicological research on sufficient collection depth necessitated the marshaling of resources to build research collections. In libraries whose collections were substantially developed in that period, success was often the direct result of the interest taken by an individual member of the music department faculty. Manfred Bukofzer at the University of California at Berkeley, Glen Haydon at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, George Sherman Dickinson at Vassar College, and Otto Albrecht at the University of Pennsylvania were each instrumental in establishing research-level music collections at their respective institutions.