By Matthew Lawrence
Posted: 11/12/07
If you ask Brown students where they find great music, most will probably direct you to the iTunes online store or LimeWire. Few students realize, however, how expansive and accessible the Orwig Music Library is.
Located at 1 Young Orchard Ave., the library opened in 1988 and contains approximately 100,000 music items, including Western classical music, jazz and popular music recordings and materials. The library houses 24,000 scores, 1,100 videos, 25,000 CDs, 21,000 books, 250 journals and around 15,000 LPs as well as manuscripts and music periodicals.
“We have a very rich collection of music from all over the world,” said Music Librarian Edwin Quist.
The Orwig library was not always as prestigious as it is today. According to David Josephson, associate professor of music, the University’s music library began as a small collection of books, scores and LPs at the Rockefeller Library, and a smaller one at the former Pembroke Library. It was overseen by a librarian who specialized in Russian studies and during the 1970s its budget never exceeded $4,000.
With the arrival of Merrily Taylor as University librarian in 1981, the budget began to expand. Josephson arrived at Brown in 1979 and raised $2.5 million in the early 1980s to expand the holdings and make it today “the best music library in New England, after Harvard and Yale” universities, Josephson said.

The library’s extensive resources are used mainly by Brown students and faculty rather than by outside scholars. Quist said the library is a working collection rather than a research library and is used by music students, Brown’s foreign language departments and the Department of American Civilization.
Despite its vast resources, the library continues to add nearly 4,000 items each year. Quist said students often request new materials, which Orwig librarians either borrow from other libraries or purchase using restricted endowments.
“The interests of Brown students are so diverse that there is always something that we don’t have,” Quist said.
This year, 10,000 seldom-used volumes will be moved to the Library Collections Annex located on the Providence-Cranston border. The library is also currently updating its world music collection, with a focus on Caribbean music so it can serve as a resource for the Department of Africana Studies.
Students can also use the library’s two archives: The Walter Neiman Archive of Sound Recordings stores historical information on musical recordings in the 20th century, with approximately one third of the archive devoted to opera music, and the James T. Koetting Ethnomusicology Archive catalogs published recordings, scores and videos from all over the world, as well as unpublished recordings and notes.
Though students living in nearby Perkins Hall often use the library for both its musical resources and well-designed study rooms, Orwig’s location east of the main campus means that relatively few students take advantage of its offerings.
Despite Orwig’s attributes, Josephson noted that some improvements are still necessary. Primarily, Josephson noted that the library could use another full time professional staff member, since Orwig is “too reliant on students” who work there part-time.
Josephson also said the library could “always use more money for scores.” In addition, he said the library is running out of space to store the numerous collections that are constantly being acquired through purchases and gifts. The solution to the space problem, Josephson said, is to expand the stacks in the basement of the library and excavate part of the lawn outside the building without harming the landscape.
Josephson further noted that Orwig needs to expand its acquisitions budget in order to account for the declining value of the dollar so that the library can continue to purchase musical scores from Europe. Other improvements include the implementation of task lighting and re-upholstering of the library’s chairs. But, he said, those are all fairly minor matters.
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