The University of North Texas Libraries is an American academic research library system that serves the constituent colleges and schools of University of North Texas in Denton. The phrase "University of North Texas Libraries" encompasses three aspects: The library collections as a whole and its organizational structure; The physical facilities and digital platform that house the collections; and certain self-contained collections of substantial size that warrant the name "Library"—the Music Library and the Digital Libraries (collections), for example, are housed in Willis Library (the building).
Library buildings Willis Library
The Willis Library is the main library of the University of North Texas. It houses business, economics, education, humanities, and social sciences collections. It also houses microforms and special collections such as the Music Library, the Digital Libraries, and Archives and Rare Books.
Originally known as the Library when first constructed in 1969, the building was renamed in honor of A.M. Willis, Jr., in 1978 during his thirteenth year as a regent for the university and ninth year as chairman of the Board of Regents. The building—originally designed as three buildings to be erected in three phases—was designed by Caudill Rowlett Scott and opened the summer of 1971. It was formally dedicated April 25, 1972. The building is the third of four university buildings to bear the name of a regent. The first, a dormitory, was Kerr Hall (1969). The second, a classroom building, was Wooten Hall (1970). The fourth is the Murchison Performing Arts Center.
The Willis Library was the third library building. The first two structures were:
Sycamore Hall, the current site of The Sycamore Library, was built in 1937. O.J. Curry Hall, was dedicated in 1950 in honor of Othel Jackson Curry (1904–1994), Dean of the College of Business from 1946 to 1969.
Of the original design—a center section and two wings—only the center section was constructed. Its location is the site of the institution's first football field. The university received a federal grant of $1,456,783 that paid for one third of the cost. The remaining two-thirds was raised through the sale of bonds. The regents, sans-Willis, resolved to name the library to honor Willis for his "loyal and devoted service." Willis invested great personal effort into the planning and construction of the library. Aside from being a rapid reader with a large personal library, Willis felt that erecting a large, centrally located, beautiful facility for current and future collections was a high priority. He viewed it as a fundamental building-block, particularly at post-baccalaureate and research levels. North Texas, at the time, was already well known for some of its collections, particularly music.
Student Computing Commons The 24-Hour Student Computing Commons at Willis is part of the Student Computer Lab System at North Texas. The 24hr Commons in Willis Library has about 300 computers, 120 laptops and is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week during long semesters in the academic calendar.
UNT Media Library Previously located at Chilton Hall, The UNT Media Library contains the UNT Libraries' nonprint, audiovisual collections, which include films, audiobooks, and video games. One of the missions of the UNT Media Library is to support the instructional and research needs of UNT faculty, staff, and students by collecting, maintaining, and providing access to media materials that represent all academic disciplines and all genres of film. Video recording equipment and gaming consoles are available for checkout. In early 2024, the library was moved from Chilton Hall to the second floor of Willis Library.
Sycamore Library The second library was built in 1937 on Chestnut Street and Avenue B, facing west. When the building opened, it contained 72,000 volumes, a broadcasting studio and a small auditorium. The building also housed a bindery, art department and classrooms. The building was expanded in 1952 and 1958. In 1961, the auditorium was converted into a reading room and the browsing room into a stack area. Air conditioning was installed in the public areas, but not in the closed stacks area, in 1962. April 27, 2011 was the grand opening of the Eagle Commons Library, formally known as the Science and Technology Library. The structure was renovated to provide "space more suitable for group study and presentations." On August 1, 2021 the name was updated to Sycamore Library to allow patrons to more easily identify and locate the library.
The building has had three names: Library, Information Sciences, and was changed to Sycamore Hall in June 2011. The Sycamore Library houses the government documents, law, political science, geography and business collections. It also houses an open computer area, an ideal place to study in groups, create multi-media projects, and record presentations.
Discovery Park Library The Discovery Park Library houses collections and access workstations for the College of Engineering and the College of Information, Library Science, and Technologies. Multiple areas of engineering, library and information science, and learning technology comprise its holdings.
Library Annex The current Library Annex was built in 1994 and is located across I-35, near the Recreational Sports Complex. It is a three-story building with 56 rooms totaling . The building replaced the Library Annex that opened in 1958, adjoining the Main Library that is now the Sycamore Library.
Special collections
Music Library at Willis The Music Library, part of the Special Libraries Division, serves the entire university, but specializes in the scholarly and performance research needs of the College of Music.
History
Most major music libraries share the trait of having started building collections early, as early as 1940—some long before. The New York Public Library, Harvard, Columbia, and Cornell—and national libraries, such as the Library of Congress—are among those that had already accumulated formidable collections. Some academic libraries, such as the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, hold rare historical works simply because the library itself is historic.
Music library acquisitions, simply put, are typically achieved three ways: (i) through a buying program from publishers, (ii) through archiving of original works of the host institution, and (iii) through donations or purchases of non-published, non-duplicated materials. The latter two, more so than the first, give each Music Library its own distinct identity.
After World War I, sheet music publishers—namely those from Tin Pan Alley—experienced unprecedented growth that was fueled for the next three decades by composers, technological advancements—and also market saturation owed partly to higher quality of recorded sound, radio, and film. The boom was so great that even some "established" music libraries were facing challenges relating to expectations of the scope of acquisitions deviating from European classical to avant-garde, popular, jazz, blues, folk, and experimental. Standardization of uniform cataloging of a music industry that had little knowledge of the pioneering music librarianship was a large undertaking. By the late 1930s, music librarianship was recognized as a new frontier. Fifteen years earlier (1923), the field of musicology, as an academic vocation, was also a new discipline. Many credit Otto Kinkeldey as not only being among the first musicologists, but also, in 1937, the first to propose music librarianship, not only as field of study at the university level, but also as a full-time vocation requiring expertise on par with PhDs.
By mid to late 1930s, North Texas had already acquired sizable music collections that included orchestral scores, sheet music, phonograph recordings, and a Carnegie funded reproducing unit. But concerted growth of music collections at North Texas was the culmination of (i) several national initiatives (late 1930s) and (ii) the 1938 appointment of Wilfred Bain to head its College of Music, which at that time had been a deanless School of Music. On the national level in the late 1930s, the newly formed National Association of Schools of Music, the newly formed Music Library Association, and music educators in higher education were collaborating to develop national curricular standards for music schools. Wilfred Bain, through his involvement with the NASM was part of that movement.
In September 1940, Bain appointed the first North Texas music librarian, Anna Harriet Heyer (1910–2002). Heyer was a classical pianist and was among the first in the country who was formally educated at the university level specifically in the field of music librarianship. Heyer headed the Music Library for 25 years—from 1940 to 1965—building it into a formidable music institution.
Heyer's mother had been a librarian. And Heyer had been librarian for public schools in Fort Worth in the mid-1930s. But in 1937, she drew inspiration to pursue a career as a music librarian after reading a transcript of a speech delivered that same year by Kinkeldey. In that speech, he proposed standards for a music library and a curriculum for educating music librarians at American universities. This profoundly influenced Heyer who, from that point forward, devoted her life to music librarianship.
Four other factors contributed to the growth in music collections at North Texas, beginning in the 1940s. One: Post World War II enrollment of music majors at North Texas grew exponentially. By 1946, the College of Music was among the largest in the country. Two: In 1950, the School began offering doctorates in musicology, composition, and theory. Three: North Texas, in 1947, was the first to offer a degree in jazz studies. The upshot was that high enrollment, diversity of music disciplines, and academic breadth and depth placed a premium on having a strong, comprehensive music library. Four: North Texas, in 1939, had been admitted into NASM, but as an associate member. Heads of music at several universities used the prospects of full institutional membership to persuade university presidents to provide more funding. In 1939, NASM, while Bain was also affiliated with its committee for academic standards, added minimum standards for a music library. In 1940, the year Heyer was hired, NASM granted North Texas full institutional membership.
Kinkeldey, from September 1951 to August 1952, became a distinguished visiting professor of musicology at North Texas.
In 1957, Heyer published a groundbreaking bibliography, Historical Sets, Collected Editions, and Monuments of Music: A Guide to their Contents. This reference stood for decades as one of the essential reference tools in the field of Western classical music. For comprehensive research music libraries, it became a guide for holdings.
As of 2012, the Music Library houses one of the largest music collections in the United States. The library has about a half-million scores, approximately 900,000 sound recordings—and books, photographs, and odd memorabilia.
Acquisitions and special collections The Music Library has a special collections in jazz, including those of Stan Kenton, Maynard Ferguson, Willis Conover, Don Gillis, Leon Breeden, and WFAA.
Odds and ends First edition of Handel's Messiah Early editions of operas by Jean-Baptiste Lully Maynard Ferguson's handwritten score to Rocky A collection of Elvis Presley 45 rpms for Sun Records Autographed album of the Ramones Postcard from composer Arnold Schoenberg A framed page from a 700-year-old Catholic missal hangs on a wall. "This was written long before lined notation," according to Martin. "There are markers over some of the words that apparently told the priest to go up or down as he sang, but we have no idea what they mean."