This collection contains sheet music collected by Annie McDonald Hale, a Blacksburg, Virginia resident. Additions seem to have been made by Hale's friend, Willie M. Gates, to whom the collection was bequeathed. The collection includes the sheet music for many of the most popular songs of the first half of the twentieth century, though a few items date from the late nineteenth century, and scattered selections dating from the 1960s and 1970s are included as well. Among the selections are patriotic songs, novelty songs, show tunes, instrumentals, and a few pieces that, by later standards, would be considered racially offensive. Many of the pieces feature illustrated covers, some including photographs of the vocalists who made the songs famous.