Western Washington University’s Music Library holds 132,959 scores, journals, books, CDs and other types of music-related media.
Marian Ritter, head of the Music Library, has been with the library through five different locations and two buildings and even helped the architect design the current interior. She has since filled it with music-related media, plants and art.
Ritter built the collection through decades of strategic purchasing and donations from the public.
In one noteworthy contribution, Donald F. Phillips from Chicago — now celebrated with a plaque in the music library — donated a plethora of LPs and books on jazz.
“He brought everything from Chicago to Bellingham, and we got the entire collection. It was incredible,” Ritter said.
In the collection are a variety of rare records and manuscripts, including a Ludwig van Beethoven piece that can only be found in 18 libraries around the world and an 1829 Franz Schubert piece that can be found in only the Western Music Library —according to the Répertoire International des Sources Musicales database.
Students can listen to records in the library on record players, or copy the music onto a flash drive for further listening. The library is home to instructional books for students looking to improve on or learn an instrument.
An empty record player in the Western Music Library at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash. The north wall of the Music Library has been dedicated to record players and study spots for students. // Photo by Ayden Sweat
Located on the second floor of the Performing Arts Center, the Music Library offers views of Bellingham Bay and “For Handel,” the large red sculpture in front of the Performing Arts Center. Even though it offers great views and a quiet place to study, Ritter feels the library is often overlooked by Western students.
“We lend to libraries all over the U.S. and the world. We're lending and our scores are sitting here waiting for Western students to use and any Western student can use it,” Ritter said.
Materials in the Music Library are available for all Western students and anyone with a Bellingham Public Library card.
“Even if you don't know anything about music, it would be awesome to just check out a vinyl or a CD or something and just randomly listen to it, you know? You have a spare 10 minutes. I think that's a great activity,” said Lachlan Swanson, a second-year music performance major.
For musicians, music libraries can be a great place to find a piece of music to play that you haven’t already heard a million times, said Cate Gerhart, head of the monographic cataloging unit at the University of Washington.
Gerhart is a WWU graduate who worked with Ritter in the Music Library during her time at Western and fell in love with cataloging during her time working for Western Libraries in the late ’70s.
Despite the explosion in popularity of music streaming platforms, some music can only be found on physical mediums, Gerhart said.
“There's nothing like listening to a really good record and seeing the liner notes, telling you all about it,” Ritter said. “I miss [when students] would all have the score and the record right there, reading the score and listening to the record. But I know things are changing, and I'm ready to go whatever the direction is. Digitizing is the future.”
A display case in the entry to the Western Music Library at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash. This case is dedicated to notable Western faculty and alumni work. // Photo by Ayden Sweat
Cody Mills (he/him) is a campus news reporter for The Front this quarter. He is a third-year environmental journalism major. When he's not reporting you can find him skiing or climbing. You can reach him at codymills.thefront@gmail.com.
