CRANFORD—Thanks to more than a year’s work and the assistance of a host of volunteers, the Cranford Public Library recently completed a comprehensive index to its collection of sheet music books.
The index covers 109 sheet music anthologies and includes nearly 9,000 songs. Genres include pop, rock, show tunes, folk, blues, country & western and R&B. Songs can be searched for by title, composer or lyricist.
Reference Librarian Ron Gorda, one of the coordinators of the project, notes, “Prior to the creation of the index, there was no simple way to pinpoint a particular song in one of our many sheet music anthologies. A request for the sheet music for a specific song used to mean checking the indexes of dozens of anthologies and hoping the song would show up in one of them.
Now, in just a matter of seconds, we can tell a patron whether or not we have the sheet music they want and exactly which of our books, if any, contains the sheet music. The index is stored on a computer, which means we can easily update it any time we acquire a new sheet music anthology.”
Patrons wishing to consult the index can visit the reference desk, call the library at 908-709-7272, or send an email to library@cranfordnj.org.
