Former Yorkshire Music Library relaunches

Everyone’s heart sank when, for the second time in five years, the great collection of music scores known as the Yorkshire Music Library (comprising nearly 200,000 scores from 11 Yorkshire authorities) closed down when its parent company, a social enterprise, failed earlier this year.

At the time, the resource was being used by almost 2,000 music groups, so the closure had a significant impact on music making across the UK.

Leeds Libraries came to the rescue and are now ready to open for business, after months and months of hard work transporting, cataloguing and re-housing the entire stock from Huddersfield to Leeds Central Library.

Councillor Debra Coupar, Executive Member for Communities and thus with responsibility of oversight for libraries, spoke with enthusiasm at the launch event about the new resource which, now merged with Leeds Libraries’ own considerable orchestral repertoire, represents one of the largest collections of sheet music available for public hire in the country.

All the repertoire is available for browsing in the library itself, and can be hired either directly from Leeds Music and Performing Arts Library or via Inter Library Loans – making it available to everyone in the UK.