The James Mobberley Collection was donated to the UMKC Miller Nichols Library by Mobberley himself in November 2017.

The manuscript collection contains a wide array of items from various aspects of the composer and professor’s career. The largest part of the collection is sheet music from Mobberley’s compositional output. There are physical copies of scores and parts for the bulk of the composer’s works from his days as an undergraduate up through the 2010s. This allows one to observe the compositional and technical trajectory of Mobberley’s writing over a span of forty years, in addition to showing the progression of computer engraving technology from its infancy. Most of the scores and parts (as well as live recordings) are also on digital format as well.

In addition to sheet music of Mobberley’s compositions, this collection contains concert programs also spanning about forty years. There is professional correspondence, miscellaneous academic documents, academic activity reports, grant requests, and newspaper clippings. The bulk of the newspaper clippings come from local newspapers, and they detail Mobberley’s long history of involvement with the Kansas City area. In particular, there are glowing articles written after the professor secured sizeable grant funding to create UMKC’s electronic music laboratory. This collection thus provides the resources for a professional, personal, and critical evaluation of the accomplished life and career of a prominent Kansas City artist, pedagogue, and community member.

The audiovisual materials mostly consist of performances of Mobberley's compositions. Some recordings from the collection are searchable in the UMKC Libraries catalog. Cataloged Sound Recordings from the James Mobberley Collection