Musicians Institute Library: About the Library: Collections

In our catalog, you will find the following:

Books and Scores. We have almost 2,000 books available for your to check out. A majority of these books are scores, literature about music, and technique books. We have a small collection of non-music books, which can still support your musical education.
Media. We have some CDs and CD players with some unique albums. We also have a small collection of DVDs available for checkout.
Magazines. We have a large collection of magazines from over the last 50 years in the music industry in a lot of the major publications such as Guitar Player, Guitar World, Bass Player, and more. These are available for limited access (and eventual online access).

Search our Catalog

Musicians Institute Library is proud to have the largest collection of circulating instruments in the country. This includes:

53 electric guitars (4 lefties, seven 7-strings, and four 8-strings)
15 acoustic guitars (1 lefty, 3 nylon strings)
15 bass guitars (1 lefty, two 5-strings, 1 baritone)
3 ukuleles and u-basses

We are extremely lucky to have an extensive list of miscellaneous items to help support student performance and study, including:

Pedals
Cables
Microphones
Mic stands
Headphones
Other miscellaneous items (i.e. capos, tuners, adjustment tools, adapters, etc)

MI Library has over 350 titles in our Overdrive eBook collection. This collection includes:

Books on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Music History books
Biographies and autobiographies of various artists
Sheet music from musicals, movies, albums, and more
Real and Fake books
Some textbooks (limited)

To access this collection, go to Overdrive, and sign in using your MI username (your email without the @student.mi.edu) and password. Find the book(s) you want to read and borrow them. You will then be able to load it onto your kindle or other device to read. If you have any questions or issues, please contact our librarian.

Our Librarian recommends the following databases:

Alexander Street Press This link opens in a new window Alexander Street publishes more than 80 collections totaling many millions of pages, audio tracks, videos, images, and playlists. We’re concentrating on building the best collections we can across the curriculum—in literature; music; women's history; black history; psychological counseling and therapy; social and cultural history; drama, medical, theatre, film, and the performing arts; religion; sociology; and other emerging areas. With over 900,000 albums, 11 million tracks, in various genres, 3,800 videos, and 100,000 books with over 1.8 million pages, Alexander Street Press has all the resources you need to support your learning. Simply log in using your MI email username and password.
JSTOR Music This link opens in a new window The JSTOR Music Collection contains thirty-three leading titles in the field of musicology, music theory, ethnomusicology, and music education. Titles available in the JSTOR Music Collection are also included in a subscription to the Arts and Sciences III collection. Date coverage spans from 1844 to 2014. Much of the content is in English but German, French, Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, and Dutch are also represented in journal coverage. (Please uncheck, “Include links to external content.”)
Oxford Grove Music Online This link opens in a new window Oxford Grove Music Online is a gateway offering users the ability to access and cross-search multiple music reference resources in one location. With Grove Music Online as its cornerstone, Oxford Music Online also contains The Oxford Companion to Music, which offers more than 8,000 articles on composers, performers, conductors, instruments and notation, forms and genres, and individual works; and The Oxford Dictionary of Music, 2nd edition, which supplements Grove's more-extensive articles with content geared toward undergraduates and general users. Both of these sources are included in subscriptions to Grove Music Online.
Music Map This link opens in a new window Musicmap attempts to provide the ultimate genealogy of popular music genres, including their relations and history. It is the result of more than seven years of research with over 200 listed sources and cross examination of many other visual genealogies. It is a platform in search for the perfect balance of popular music genres to provide a powerful tool for educational means or a complementary framework in the field of music metadata and automatic taxonomy.
WhoSampled This link opens in a new window Dig deeper into music by discovering direct connections among over 632,000 songs and 209,000 artists, from Hip-Hop, Rap and R&B via Electronic / Dance through to Rock, Pop, Soul, Funk, Reggae, Jazz, Classical and beyond. WhoSampled's content is built by a community of over 22,000 contributors.

Our Librarian Recommends the Following Guides:

Student Login Guide
by Amanda Hansen Last Updated Oct 18, 2022 1825 views this year
Free Resources
by Casey Burgess Last Updated Feb 21, 2023 888 views this year
Guide to Citations
by Casey Burgess Last Updated Dec 12, 2023 2575 views this year
Music Copyright and Licensing
by Casey Burgess Last Updated Dec 2, 2022 25953 views this year
Music, Race and Cultural Freedom
by Elisa Gonzalez Last Updated Feb 9, 2022 60 views this year