Special Collections at UCLA
UCLA Library Special Collections inspires discovery, cultivates knowledge, advances research, and preserves cultural heritage to create a distinctive learning environment for the UCLA community and society at-large.
To request to see a collection from the archives, please use the Aeon online request system.
Collections can be found by using the following:
- Calisphere This link opens in a new windowCalisphere is the University of California's free public gateway to a world of primary sources. More than 200,000 digitized items — including photographs, documents, newspaper pages, political cartoons, works of art, diaries, transcribed oral histories, advertising, and other unique cultural artifacts — reveal the diverse history and culture of California and its role in national and world history. Calisphere's content has been selected from the libraries and museums of the UC campuses, and from a variety of cultural heritage organizations across California.
- Online Archive of California (OAC) This link opens in a new windowFinding aids for primary source collections in all UC campuses and other contributing institutions, including libraries, special collections, archives, historical societies, and museums throughout California.
- UCLA Library Digital Collections This link opens in a new windowRare and unique digital materials developed by the UCLA Library to support education, research, service, and creative expression, including the AIDS Poster Collection, the Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive and more.
Film Collections at UCLA
While the Music Library does own many of the Oscar winning films for best musical score and/or song, our collection is merely a speckling of the films available for viewing at UCLA.
To understand the full depth of the films available to be viewed, you should spend some time exploring the following collections:
- UCLA Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American StudiesThe Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, founded in 1969 as the Center for Afro-American Studies (CAAS), was renamed after Nobel Prize winner, scholar, activist, and UCLA alumnus Ralph J. Bunche in 2003, in commemoration of the centenary of his birth.
- Chicano Studies Research Center UCLAThe CSRC was designed to have a systemic impact on the campus and in the field. Its research mission is supported by five distinct components: a library with special collections archive, an academic press, collaborative research projects, public programs and community-based partnerships, and a competitive grant and fellowship program.
- UCLA Film & Television ArchiveThe Film and Television Archive has research copies of many titles, with particular strength in Hollywood film. The catalog is also distinct, and can be accessed via the Archive's homepage.
- UCLA Instructional Media CenterThe Instructional Media Collections and Services (IMCS) primarily serves faculty and departmental personnel who use media in the classroom. The IMCS houses and maintains several department and study center collections and features an ever growing collection of DVDs, videotapes, laserdiscs and films.
Cue Sheets, Film Scores and Sheet Music
While the Music Library has some of the readily available sheet music collections and scores from films, many of these materials are of archival quality. At UCLA, Library Special Collections holds the majority of the cue sheets, film music scores and sheet music collections. You should consider some of the following if you wish to examine scores/sheet music/cue sheets related to film:
Note that this list is only a speckling of the collections of written film music available in Library Special Collections.
- Silent Film Collection ca. 1900 - 1930Collection # PASC-M 12
- Thematic Cue Sheets for Silent FilmsCollection # 162
- Warner Brothers Studios Music CollectionCollection # 317
A brief initial view of the collection presents 390 boxes of music used for silent film, including printed dance band arrangements (scores and parts), sheet music, and other published and some unpublished music; 137 boxes of sheet music, choral editions, and other published and unpublished music used as a music reference library; 47 boxes of books, mostly about music, frequently stamped with "Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Music Library". Many of these books are signed by the authors. Many more are signed by George Schneider, Music Librarian at MGM from 1928-1956, who founded and developed the MGM Music Library, which by the late 1940's was one of the largest music collections in the country. This great library was sent to landfill in the '60's as part of what has been called the "MGM Holocaust", the tragedy that destroyed most of the great manuscript scores composed for MGM films, triggering a great deal of film music preservation activity, including the work that has been done here at UCLA. The materials we have just received from Warner Bros may in fact represent the last (only?) remaining portion of the MGM Library. The collection is in the midst of being processed and the finding aid will be updated periodically.