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On July 1, 2009 East Carolina University's Music Library ended its thirty-fifth year of service as a department of J.Y. Joyner Library and began a year-long coral anniversary celebration. Though the music library was originally intended to support the educational mission of ECU's School of Music, it has grown to meet the needs of musicians, music teachers, and music lovers from all parts of the eastern North Carolina region and earned the distinction of being the largest collection of music-related materials east of Raleigh.
This gem in eastern North Carolina's musical crown had humble beginnings. In the 1958-59 academic year, East Carolina College's Department of Music converted its student lounge into a small library of scores and sound recordings. When the new A.J. Fletcher Music Center opened in the mid-1960s it included an approximately 2,500 square foot music library managed on a part-time basis by a retired music professor.
The next major milestone in the history of the library, and the one that we celebrate this year, is the conversion of the independent departmental library to a branch of Joyner Library. During its 1973 site visit, the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM) accreditation team made the recommendation to both consolidate the departmental score and recording collection with the music monograph collection in Joyner Library and give the administration of the new collection over to Joyner. This recommendation became a reality on July 1 of the following year. During the thirty-five years since, the staff has grown to include two faculty music librarians and three paraprofessionals, the collection has grown from 14,500 volumes in the late sixties to nearly 90,000 volumes, and the annual gate count of 50,500 in 1984 has doubled.
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Music Library Stacks 1979
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