Binder’s Volumes Research Initiative

About the Digital Collection

This collection includes bound compilations of sheet music from a variety of composers.

About the Binder’s Volumes Research Initiative

The project addresses the needs of the growing area of research in music binders volumes. These volumes contain published sheet music that people (primarily women) across the U.S. compiled according to their preferences. They attract multidisciplinary research on the intersecting musical, social, and cultural contexts present in a given volume. This research also challenges second-hand narratives of American music in the 1800s via actual artifacts of social participation in music, restoring the perspectives of women to an often male-dominated discourse and enriching the re-evaluation of conventional narratives. Many "lost" works also await discovery, as volumes often contain rare or unique titles. This important and growing area of scholarly work finds roadblocks in discoverability, physical and digital preservation, and access.

This project is funded by a 2023 Humanities Collections and Reference Resources (HCRR) grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Additional Resources

Links to these items will be posted in the main project site on UNT’s Omeka site.