Music and Dance Library Collections
The Thomas Gorton Music and Dance Library contains more than 110,000 books, bound journals and scores, along with 15,000 LPs and 10,000 CDs. The library also offers access to sophisticated research sources, including full-text electronic journals and online indexes to scholarly materials for music and dance. Materials support research and performance for master's and doctoral programs offered at the university, as well as the undergraduate programs in all performance areas (including theater voice), dance, music history, music theory, composition, music education and music therapy.
The music portion of the library is especially strong in composers' complete and collected editions and monumental sets, and is one of the leading music collections in the Great Plains region. The library has an extensive collection of performance and study scores for voice, solo instruments, as well as large and chamber ensembles.
Learn about KU's Sound Archive.
Subject Guides
Guides for the use of the library's resources:
Located in Gorton Music & Dance
Media Facilities
The Joe and Joyce Hale Media Center features 12 Windows PCs for digital audio and video playback and general use, as well as eight Mac computers dedicated for media editing. Headphones are available for checkout at the circulation desk, as well as MIDI keyboards.
Digital Recordings
Patrons may play back digital recordings at any workstation, or they may use the sound system in our group listening room (240B) to play digital and vinyl recordings. CDs, DVDs, and VHS tapes are held behind the service desk.
Video Recordings
Video recordings are available for one-week checkouts. All of the library's sound and video recordings are listed in the online catalog. Some of the recordings and videos in the Sound Archive are listed in the online catalog; more will be added as work on the sound archive progresses.
Sound Archive
The University of Kansas Sound Archive is a closed research collection of more than 100,000 recordings representing the entire chronology of recorded sound.
Subject Guides
Dance, film, music, theater, and vocal music are the subjects covered here.
Individual Study Rooms
Reserve a space to focus on your coursework.