Sanborn Room, part of the Music Library at the University of North Texas College of Music

The UNT Music Library, one of the largest in the United States, holds more than 350,000 items of music books, periodicals, scores, parts and microforms. It also owns complete works of more than 200 composers, among them new editions of the works of Bach, Handel, Berlioz, Mozart and Schoenberg, together with well over 100 special historical collections. Additionally, the library contains the Ozier Sound Recording Archive of approximately one million recordings in various historical formats.

The Sandborn Room (pictured) in Willis Library room 430A is home to the Music Library's collections of rare books and scores, and is named after longtime Denton resident and former UNT music librarian Edna Mae Sanborn. The room displays only a small selection of the collection's holdings, most of which are stored elsewhere in the Music Library.

Other noteworthy materials in the Music Library include:

  • the manuscript collection of the letters and early compositions of Arnold Schoenberg
  • the library of Lloyd Hibberd, distinguished North Texas musicologist, containing about 10,000 volumes especially strong in French baroque first editions and manuscripts
  • the Reinhard Oppel Memorial Collection encompassing approximately 10,000 pages of musical manuscripts, rare musical editions and books on music
  • sets of Hofmeister's Handbuch der Musikalischen Literatur, Pazdirek's Universal-Handbuch der Musikliteratur and the Dictionary Catalog of the New York Public Library Music Division
  • a collection of more than 1,000 Duke Ellington discs, tapes and transcriptions, ranging from his earliest recordings in the 1920s through the 1960s
  • the Stan Kenton Collection of more than 1,600 original (manuscript) scores and parts used by the Stan Kenton bands and left by Kenton to the university libraries in 1962 and 1979
  • an archive of scores and recordings of works composed by distinguished North Texas alumni Don Gillis and Julia Smith
  • the Ozier Sound Recording Archive of approximately one million recordings in various historical formats
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