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Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library
About the Library
The Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library (MSPAL) is the central location on the College Park campus for music, theatre, and dance materials. MSPAL's circulating, reference, serial, and special collections combine to make it one of the country's most comprehensive university libraries of its kind. Opened in 2000 as part of the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, MSPAL's public spaces include a spacious main reading room, a separate reading room for special collections, a lounge-style study room, a seminar room, and a group study room. A multi-media exhibition gallery, with an adjacent lecture/concert room, links the Library to the Smith Center’s exciting programming via the Grand Pavilion.
Throughout MSPAL patrons find a variety of comfortable spaces for reading, listening, viewing, and studying. Individual carrels with computer workstations provide access to the UM Libraries' full complement of electronic resources, and feature excellent an excellent remote audio and video delivery system.
Reference librarians, curators, and expert permanent staff are available on weekdays during regular working hours. However, the library is open evening and weekend hours, and offers basic circulation and information services during those times.
The Michele Smith Performing Arts Library is particularly well known for its special collections; over a mile of manuscripts, letters, sound recordings, programs, scrapbooks, photographs, and other archival materials comprise some of the primary source materials available in the Library. Periodic various publications and recordings based on the collections are produced by the Library and distributed internationally. The Library also sponsors various symposia, exhibitions and other special events throughout the year.
The Reference and Instruction Unit and Circulation Unit are the primary public services units in the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library and contains the general circulating collection, the reference collection, the serials collection, and the general collection of sound recordings. Other collections in this unit include The Jacob Coopersmith Collection of Handeliana, the WOR/Wallenstein Collection of orchestral parts and scores, and a collection of rare books.
Special Collections in Performing Arts (SCPA) houses research collections maintained through joint agreements with national and international performing arts organizations. SCPA also contains collections donated by individuals: the Charles Fowler Papers, the Howe Collection of Musical Instrument Literature, the Irving and Margery Morgan Lowens Collection, and others.
These collections offer original source materials for study in American music, arts education, band history and performance, clarinet music, ethnomusicology, music education, music librarianship, music theory, musical instrument history, music recording history, and wind and percussion ensemble music.
Within the various collections are personal and organizational papers, oral histories, photographs, scrapbooks, subject files, and memorabilia as well as books, serials, music scores and sound recordings.
In addition, SCPA co-sponsors colloquia and publications on arts education topics. The proceedings of these colloquia are available for sale at Publications & Recordings page.
The collections are accessible in the Lowens Room for Special Collections by appointment with the SCPA Curator.
The International Piano Archives at Maryland (IPAM) is a major center for the study and preservation of piano performance. IPAM houses the world's most extensive concentration of piano recordings, books, scores, and related materials, including the archival papers of many great classical pianists. A number of IPAM publications – both books and compact discs – have been produced based on its unique holdings.
IPAM has closed stacks, a preservation/re-recording studio, and a listening room. The lecture/concert room adjacent to the Gallery, features a Boesendorfer Imperial Grand 290SE computerized piano capable of recording and playing back performances.
The collections are accessible by appointment with the IPAM Curator.
