The Most Paged Scores and Songbooks

The San Francisco Public Library has long assisted musicians in finding music for their professional, educational and recreational needs.  We keep certain popular music in reference at our page desk in order to assure that the music is always available.  In most cases, library patrons are happy to be able to make a copy of the music for their own individual, noncommercial enjoyment in line with the Fair Use provisions of the copyright law.  The library public often makes for their own recreational pleasure or to practice for an audition.

The most-paged items are frequently collections of musical theatre songs, omnibus song collections, and fake books.  The theatre songbooks are sometimes compiled for a vocal range as are the fake books for the bass clef, Bb and Eb instruments.  The two most uncharacteristic scores on this list are the Collected Piano Music of Jelly Roll Morton and the Ancient Music of Ireland, both of which must somehow reflect the musical tastes of our city.

SCORE 784.5 R229 2006 - The Real Vocal Book (Hal Leonard, 2006-2007).

SCORE 784.21 Si64s - The Singer's Musical Theatre Anthology. Soprano (Hal Leonard, 1986-2008).

SCORE 784.21 Si64m - The Singer's Musical Theatre Anthology. Mezzo-soprano/Belter (Hal Leonard, 1986-2008).

SCORE 786.4 M846f - The Collected Piano Music by Ferdinand Jelly Roll Morton (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1982).

SCORE 784.21 Si64b - The Singer's Musical Theatre Anthology. Baritone/Bass (Hal Leonard, 1986-2008).

SCORE 784.5 B46257 2008 - The Best Fake Book Ever: Over 1000 songs (Hal Leonard, 2008).

SCORE 782.7 So57i 1989 - Into The Woods: A New Musical / music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim (Warner Bros. Publications, 1989).

SCORE 785.42 R2291 2004b - The Real Book. [Bass clef] (Hal Leonard, 2004).

SCORE 784.5 G565 1985 - The Golden Era of Nostalgic Music (Columbia Pictures Publications, 1985).

SCORE 784.5 P57378 - Piano White Pages (Hal Leonard, 2006).

SCORE 784.492 B8863a - The Ancient Music of Ireland: An Edition Comprising The Three Collections By Edward Bunting Originally Published in 1796, 1809, and 1840 (Waltons' Piano and Musical Instrument Galleries, 1969).

SCORE 784.5 M8557 2000 - The Most Fantastic Fakebook In The World (Warner Bros. Publications, 2000).

SCORE 784.5 H1295 - Hal Leonard Real Jazz Book / C edition (Hal Leonard, 199-?).

SCORE 782.83 M8687 2008 - The Movie Fake Book (Hal Leonard, 2008).

SCORE - 785.42 B105 1984 - The Bb real book (s.n., 1984?).

SCORE 784.5 W413 2005 - Wedding & Love Fake Book (Hal Leonard, 2005).

SCORE 780.82 C5694 2003 - Classical Fake Book (Hal Leonard, 2005).

SCORE 784.8 HP1950:3 - Popular Songs of The 1950s (Music Department. San Francisco Public Library, ??).

SCORE 784.5 T3495 - This Is The Ultimate Fake Book / C edition (Hal Leonard, 1981-1985).

SCORE 784.5 J982 - Just Standards Real Book / C edition (Warner Bros. Publications, 2001).

SCORE 784.5 G9493 - Guitar Tab White Pages (Hal Leonard, 2001-2005).

SCORE 784.21 D3619 2005 - The Definitive Broadway Collection (Hal Leonard, 2005).

The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music - now online!

There have been many encyclopedias and dictionaries for music of the Western classical tradition.  Jazz, rock and pop music also have their share of reference works.  When it was published in the late 1990s and early 2000s, The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music was a welcome and much-needed source for our reference shelves.

Well-known genres like Anglo-American folk, jazz, rock, pop and classical musics, while encompassing many styles and sub-genres have a certain uniformity in approach.  The wider music of the world, however, is breath-taking in its diversity.  Much of the music written about in The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music is literally far from the beaten path, created by musicians with no connection to the commercial music world.  Many of the world's nations have amazing ethnic and linguistic diversity.  The ten volumes of this reference endeavor to bring an understanding of this vast range of musical possibilities to the interested music lover.

The most frequent users of this reference set have been students writing papers, usually about the music or culture of a nation or ethnic group.  The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music has always been a solid source.  For non-students and non-researchers it works as a sort of musical travelogue that includes, audio, as well as bibliographic and discographic references for further reference.

We are now pleased to be able to offer online access to the entire content of The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music.  While this eBook offers the same great information, the access to this information as the printed resource, is not always straight-forward to use due to the translation of a book format into a database.

(click image to enlarge)

Of course, one welcome innovation that a database has is a keyword search, located at the top right corner of every page.  A more user-friendly feature of the database is the column labelled "Browse" on the left side.

• All Volumes allows you to work your way through each of the 10 volumes.
• Audio Albums links you to streaming audio of the recordings that accompany each of these volumes.
• All People is an alphabetical listing of the people mentioned in the text (including links to the All-Music Guide).
• Subjects delineates around 60 subject terms that the database has indexed.
• Genres delineates genres and subgenres that the database has indexed.
• Instruments allows you search by instrument name or browse by the categories of  aerophones (winds), chordophones (strings),  electronic, ensemble,  idiophones (percussion) membranophones (drums) and vocalizations.

• Ensembles is an alphabetical listing of ensemble names in the encyclopedia.
• Cultural Groups is an alphabetical listing of ethnic groups in the encyclopedia.
• Places delineates the world by continents and country names. 

The online The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music is available to all San Francisco Public Library card holders.

The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music (Garland Pub., 1998-2002). - print and online

Cairo 678 - A Global Lens film screening

On Sunday, January 5, 2014, the San Francisco Public Library will screen Cairo 678, a critically acclaimed Arabic language film from 2010 by a first time filmmaker Mohamed Diab.  Diab was born in Saudi Arabia but completed his formal education in Egypt and the United States.

The film showcases three women from three different social classes in Cairo who come together in an uneasy alliance to combat sexual harassment, with unpredictable results.

Cairo 678 has a running time of 100 minutes and will be screened at 2:00 PM in the Koret Auditorium of the Main Library. 

All programs at the Library are free and open to the public.