Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library

The Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library (MSPAL) is the central location on the College Park campus for music, theatre, and dance materials. The circulating, reference, serial, and special collections include 56,000 books, 156,000 musical scores, 130,000 audio and video recordings, 4500 microform titles, and 281 active journal subscriptions.

Opened in 2000 as part of the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, MSPAL's public areas include a spacious main reading room with individual study carrels and computer workstations, 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 MSPAL to the The Clarice's exciting programming via the Grand Pavilion.

Reference librarians, curators, and expert permanent staff are available on weekdays during regular working hours. Basic circulation and information services are available during evening and weekend hours.

MSPAL is home to several special collections and archives of materials relating to the arts. Special Collections in Performing Arts (SCPA) of the University of Maryland Libraries contains performing arts collections that preserve performance, education, recordings, and scholarship.

Also located within MSPAL, the International Piano Archives at Maryland is a unique resource for the study, appreciation, and preservation of the classical piano repertoire and its performance. IPAM's collections comprise the world's most extensive concentration of piano recordings, books, scores, programs and related materials, including the archival papers of many great keyboard artists.

Last update: Sep 22, 2017