Who has good scans of 1890s American popular songs?

[olmsted]

I've been looking at sheet music for American popular songs of the 1890s -- things like After the Ball, The Band Played On, Sidewalks of New York -- and most of the free scans I'm finding on line are not very good quality. Maybe adequate on the screen, but I wish they were clearer when printed. Have you found that some on-line collections are more likely than others to contain high-quality scans? Thanks. Olmsted.

[jfarrington]

Check out the Sheet Music Consortium: digital.library.ucla.edu/sheetmusic/. The music is drawn from the archives of LC, Indiana, UCLA, Duke, Johns Hopkins, and other large sheet music collections.

[olmsted]

Thanks for the tip. I'll try there, though LoC and Johns Hopkins are among the places where I've been finding weak scans. It seems that colorful cover pages sometimes receive more careful attention than the music itself. Olmsted.