About the Albrecht Music Library

The Otto E. Albrecht Music Library and Eugene Ormandy Music and Media Center are located in the Van Pelt Library, on the fourth floor (west). We serve the research and teaching needs of Penn’s Music Department and the Penn music community. At the core of the collection are scores in both scholarly and performing editions, literature on music history and theory, ethnomusicology, jazz, popular music, and microforms of primary sources. The Library houses more than 70,000 books, more than 75,000 music scores (print and digital), and more than 50,000 sound recordings and video (digital and analog formats), as well as journals and periodicals.

In addition, the Department of Special Collections houses the Library's rare music along with several collections of particular musical interest, including the papers of Marian Anderson, Rudolf Serkin, Alma Mahler Werfel, and the American Musicological Society, the Eugene Ormandy Archive, the Leopold Stokowski Collection, and the archives of the Philadelphia Musical Fund Society, Savoy Company, and Marlboro Music Festival.

The Eugene Ormandy Music and Media Center offers six listening stations and five video viewing rooms, as well as the Glossberg Recording Room. The Marian Anderson Study Center features comfortable seating, quiet study space, current periodicals, computers, the Bodek Seminar Room, a scanner, and proximity to print collections and research services.