Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library

Music & Songs

These sites can help you either find lyrics to songs, sheet music for old or public domain songs, or to determine song book titles that may include your song. With the song book title, you can then see if the Chavez Central Library has the book or, if you have time, a Librarian can do an inter-library loan to obtain the sheet music for you.

All Music Guide: This site does not help you find sheet music or song lyrics. However, it is a great site to learn about all kinds of popular music. The reviewers are quite knowledgeable about many genres of music. For each genre there are key artists, key albums, timelines etc. It can be very useful if you are interested in exploring a new kind of music and want to find out which are the "greatest" recordings to start with.

California Library Systems Cooperative Song Index
** Be patient! The server for this site is sometimes quite slow. **: The collections that are indexed in this database belong to California library system reference centers and are used to loan system member libraries with copies of songs requested by their patrons. These reference centers will not loan copies of songs directly to the general public. The general public can borrow copies of songs through their local library. Reference centers will loan copies of songs to any library under the conditions that are stated at the "who to contact" page. In addition to being an index to song books in the collections of these reference centers, it is also an index to song books in general. If this song index identifies a book as containing the song that you are looking for, you need not contact one of the reference centers to obtain a copy. A library in your area may also own a copy of that book. It is also possible for your local library to borrow a copy of that book, or sometimes a copy of particular song in that book, from another library through interlibrary loan.

Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music: This collection contains over 29,000 pieces of music and focuses on popular American music spanning the period from 1780 to 1960. All pieces of the collection are indexed on this site and a search will retrieve a catalog description of the pieces. An image of the cover and each page of music will also be retrieved if the music was published before 1923 and the music is in the public domain.

Los Angeles Public Library's Song Index: Even though this source is for the Los Angeles Public Library collection, it can be useful locally. It is possible that the Chavez Central Library may have the same title. Please check with a Librarian at the Chavez Information Desk or check the title in the library catalog. The Chavez collection of reference song books are located on the lower level in the Storage area

Lyrics World: This site, in Brazil, contains thousands of transcriptions of song lyrics. It also includes: Top 40 Hits of 1930-1999, Artist Collections, ,#1 Songs of 1930-1999, and Top Singles by Decade. A very handy resource!

Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music 1820-1860 and 1870-1885 from the Library of Congress: This collection of sheet music can be searched by keyword or browsed by author, title or subject. It includes composers such as Stephen Foster and subjects such as Irish music.

Looking for songs in the songbook collections? See search tips under Hot Topics: Music.