Opening hours
Monday: 9.30am to 5pm
Tuesday: 9.30am to 8pm
Wednesday: 9.30am to 5pm
Thursday: 9.30am to 8pm
Friday: 9.30am to 5pm
Saturday: 9am to 5pm
Sunday:1pm to 4pm
Facilities
The Music and Drama Service is based in Shrewsbury Library and holds the main county collection of music and drama resources in Shropshire, other libraries across Shropshire hold representative selections of music and drama books.
Resources available
These include:
- books and information on contemporary and classical music, composers, artists and the music industry
- music scores for voice, piano, strings, percussion, woodwind and brass instruments
- sets of vocal score and choral sheet music
- miniature scores for many key chamber and orchestral works
- sets of plays in acting editions for adults and children
- recordings of plays, musical performances and instructional material on DVD.
Online resources
To access these please follow the links further down the page
- Community Directory: this holds details of local choirs, orchestras, ensembles or dramatic groups.
- Groves music encyclopaedia is available online, called Oxford Music Online.
- Plymouth Song Index. If you know the song title but are not sure where to find the music this index lists 60,000 songs published in 2,000 song books.
- Mutopia project. Provides out of copyright sheet music for downloading, printing, performing and distributing.
- Performing Rights Society. Provides the permissions needed to perform or broadcast music.
- Encore. The British union catalogue of performance music sets in libraries.
Staff will assist with help and advice. You can browse through the collections by visiting Shrewsbury library or give the staff a ring and they will search for the material you need and this can then be supplied through a local community library.
If your requirements cannot be satisfied from county stock, it may be possible to obtain the material through the well-developed links with other libraries throughout the country. Charges for this service will apply; please follow the link on this page for full details.
The Music and Drama Service supplies sets of scripts, vocal scores, orchestral and chamber works for performance. These can be kept for the duration of the rehearsals and performance, within reason. In order to have the best chance of receiving sets in time for rehearsals a lead in time of two months is needed; please ensure any requests are placed in plenty of time.