Australian Sheet Music

This is a collection of Australian sheet music digitized by the National Library of Australia. Most of the material comes from the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Selection

The selection policy is stated clearly on the website: "The Library aims to digitise all Australian sheet music in its collection. This includes sheet music created by Australians, published in, performed in, or otherwise associated with, Australia." So far they have made it through roughly a quarter of the holdings they intend to digitize--just over 10,550 items. In addition, the website states that out of copyright materials can be systematically digitized and they hope to have 900 pieces scanned in 2007-8. That which remains in copyright may be digitized and made available via the website according to licensing agreements. They hope to have the entire project completed by 2020.

Metadata

For each item the metadata includes information regarding the composer, contributors, title, date and location of publication, as well as a physical description and any other notes that may be pertinent.

Object Characteristics

The images are all of a high quality, and you can zoom in to enlarge them. The Library website itself is well laid out, and has an infrastructure made up of the Digital Object Storage System and Digital Collections Manager, as well as a delivery system. On the front page is shown a number of sample pieces, and one has the capability to search within the larger collection if one is looking for something specific.

Intended Audience

Anyone interested in the history of music in Australia, music publishing, post-colonial studies.