Notable collections

First-person histories of the pioneering individuals who challenged the ways women were seen by the reigning art establishment.

Scores of operas, symphonic works, chamber music, and choral works by major composers from the 17th to 20th centuries.

Engravings, etchings, mezzotints, lithographs, and acquatints, circa 1600-1850.

The Heifetz Collection features recordings by the violinist and a rare unpublished recording by Leopold Auer.

The Mario Ancona Collection includes photographs, memorabilia, sound recordings, and more related to Ancona's career.

Tenor Mario Chamlee sang at the leading opera houses in the United States and abroad. His wife Ruth was a soprano and noted singing teacher.

This is the personal collection of Theodore Fagan, United Nations translator, author, and music collector.

Open reel tape recordings made by documentary filmmaker, photographer, ethnographer, and historian Richard Sterling Finnie.

The Kronos Quartet has donated part of its collection of chamber music to the Music Library. Some scores are integrated into the general scores collection; a large part of the collection has been inventoried and is stored off site.

The Schmidt Collection contains primarily photocopies of original and transcribed music for viol and lute gathered from a variety of libraries and archival repositories.

George Antheil was an avant-garde composer and pianist whose performances caused riots. The collection consists of George Antheil's correspondence. All but one of the letters are photocopies; the dates range from 1920 to 1959.

Florence Underwood studied with Darius Milhaud at Mills College in the 1940s. The collection consists primarily of her written music and the research she conducted to write the music. In addition, scrapbooks, personal, and legal papers make up a portion of the collection.

Riverwalk Jazz: Live At The Landing educated and entertained public radio listeners with a program devoted to celebrating traditional jazz and popular music of the pre-war era.

Correspondence, blueprints, drawings, photographs, and other records relating to the planning, design and construction of the campus home of Professor and Mrs. Paul R. Hanna designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

Photographs of Stanford University buildings done by Baer for the architects for the University.

Eighteenth and nineteenth century books of English literature, international politics, and illustrated works.

Samson collection of Judaica once belonging to the Jewish Community of Copenhagen, Denmark.

The Venezky Collection contains primers and readers published in the U.S. between the end of the eighteenth century through the early decades of the twentieth century.

The Donald Pippin Collection consists primarily of Pippin's English translations of opera librettos available as pdf files.

The Blanche Thebom Collection consists of scores, correspondence, publicity, production notes, and media from the mezzo-soprano's post-Met career as teacher and director.

The James Schwabacher Collection consists of sound recordings, correspondence, scores, scrapbooks, clippings, programs, teaching material and other papers from San Francisco philanthropist and lyric tenor James Schwabacher.

The Ken Ackerman Collection consists of broadcast recordings of live jazz performances from the 1950s and 60s, captured at various clubs in San Francisco, particularly Club Hangover.

The Alan Farley Collection consists primarily of recordings made for the radio program Book Talk on KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco, California.

2,532 individual pieces of sheet music, sheet music lithographs, and music related broadsides from the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Sheet music depicting African Americans, or written by African American composers.

Letters, manuscripts and printed works by composers including Brahms, Debussy, Cimarosa, Piatti, and Franchomme.

Includes popular sheet music, often either in manuscript or with annotations.

The Bob Fitch photography archive is the complete archive of activist photographer Bob Fitch of Watsonville, California.

The private photography collection of Miss Elsie Anderson, who spent seventeen years in China as a Secretary for Young Women's Christian Association of China (YWCA) 中華基督教女青年會 between 1920s-1940s.

Chinese comic books (连环画) are a popular medium to entertain and to educate the public in China. The collection contains about 300 comic books, the majority published after 1949, from 50s to 70s and during the Cultural Revolution.

The East Asia Library has a robust collection of nearly 400 award-winning Japanese-language books for children.

There have been many publications related to the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident, but among the most poignant are the efforts of authors to explain this incident to children.  Stanford is currently building a collection of these materials.

The East Asia Library has a collection of nearly 550 Japanese woodblock print (hanpon) books printed during the 18th and 19th century.

A large collection of prints from the 17th through the mid-20th century, including souvenir images of temple-shrine complexes and other destinations, illustrating cultural changes as well as improvements in printing technology.

Over his lifetime, Denis Condon (1933-2012) amassed a collection of over 7500 piano rolls and ten instruments. The collection contains rolls of important composers of the period, all playing their own works.

The collection contains 2500 individual paperback humor and joke books in a variety of subject areas.

This collection documents the life and career of the Russian poet. It contains correspondence, manuscripts, personal papers, audio material, photographs, drawings and paintings, newspaper clippings, and printed materials.

Andrei Voznesenskii was one of the foremost poets of post-Stalinist Russia. The collection contains manuscripts, correspondence, photograph, personal files, media materials, writings about him, and ephemera.

Haupt (1907-1975) was a Polish writer and painter. The collection contains correspondence, literary manuscripts, notes, drawings and photographs.

Over 2000 titles published during in the 1940s and 1950s, held by few (if any) other libraries in the world. Important primary sources for scholars of the 20th century, the titles cover topics such as colonial territories, nuclear radiation, communism, labor, industrial mobilization, agriculture.

Kawaraban "tile-block printing" broadsheets reported on natural disasters, gossip, important events and festivals throughout the Edo period (1600-1868).