Digital Sheet Music Project (University of South Carolina)

Digital Sheet Music Project is a collection of sheet music material done at the University of South Carolina Music Library. The project has a website that has a searchable database which provides access to the bibliographic records and, for those pieces in the public domain, access to images of the cover and each page of music. Currently, the collection contains over 10,000 pieces of classical, popular, and sacred music from the 19th and early 20th centuries.

South Carolina served as a portal for a vast majority of African and Caribbean slaves entering this country, and they came with a wealth of music traditions and identities. The country’s history and identity is told through this music, in the spirituals, blues, ragtime, jazz and protest songs that developed from these early slave traditions. USC Music Library's Southern African American Music Collection (SAMC) established the centricity of Southern African-American music by collecting and preserving this music, asserting its importance both as a historical and living tradition. The SAMC archive comprises print, audio-visual, and primary source materials related specifically to African-American music of the south.

The Music Library's Sheet Music Collection consists of over 10,000 individual pieces of music acquired through the generosity of numerous individuals. The Digital Sheet Music Project was made possible by a generous donation from Mary Elizabeth Newton in honor of Music Librarian Jennifer Ottervik.

The system allows users to search the holdings of the USC Music Library's Sheet Music Collection. For a quick search, users should enter a keyword in the search field (such as the composer's last name) and click "Sheet Music" or "MP3". For a more advanced search, they should click on the red "Sheet Music Advanced Search" or "MP3 Advanced Search" buttons.