This collection consists of over 1400 pieces of African-American sheet music dating from 1820 through 1920. The collection includes many songs from the heyday of antebellum black face minstrelsy in the 1850s and from the abolitionist movement of the same period.

A collection of over 1700 pieces of sheet music published during World War I. The collection contains titles that range from patriotic to racist and from humorous to maudlin. It includes works written by Irving Berlin, George M. Cohan and performed by Al Jolson and the Ziegfeld Follies.

The Vaxer Collection includes a sizeable collection of Jewish music, and has been added to in recent years by collections of the publications of Metro Music, and other New York Yiddish- language music publishers from the 1880s forward. This collection focuses on the Yiddish-language musical stage of the period, and includes many photographs of performers (often in costume) and composers.