Happy Anniversary, IAML!
Balázs Mikusi
Thursday, August 20, 2026
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The following text appeared in the April–June 2026 issue of Fontes Artis Musicae, celebrating the 75th anniversary of the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres (IAML). Just like in 2001, for a Fontes special issue dedicated to IAML’s 50th anniversary, the head of the RISM Editorial Center (Zentralredaktion) had been asked to contribute a letter of congratulation. Since the letter, originally dated from Frankfurt am Main on 31 January 2026, sheds light on the close relationship between RISM and IAML, we are happy to reprint the text also here, with kind permission of Fontes.
Dear IAMLites,
Twenty-five years ago my predecessor Klaus Keil congratulated you on your 50th anniversary on behalf of RISM as one of IAML’s “Partners and Friends.” But I must admit that, when thinking of IAML and RISM, it is not “partnership” or even “friendship” that jumps to my mind, but rather the more intimate word “family.”
Needless to say, RISM has long had at least three “siblings” in IAML’s orbit, namely the three other R projects – each of them somewhat younger than RISM, but historically connected to IAML in many ways. That said, RISM has in fact always had a most intimate relationship with IAML itself, since the two were born less than a year apart (the first meeting of RISM’s Commission mixte took place in January 1952), and the idea to set up a larger-scale successor to Robert Eitner’s seminal Quellen-Lexikon – which eventually materialized in the Répertoire International des Sources Musicales – happened to be one of the prime inspirations for the creation of IAML itself.
In that light it is certainly no coincidence that in the abovementioned anniversary issue of Fontes Artis Musicae the two major “eyewitness” contributions about IAML’s history came from Harald Heckmann and François Lesure, both of whom also belong among the “household saints” of RISM’s history – the first as secretary and later president of RISM and in particular as the moving spirit behind the 1960 establishment of the Zentralredaktion (first in Kassel, later in Frankfurt am Main), while the second as the head of the very first RISM secrétariat central in Paris (1953–1967).
Over the years, as is inevitable, both organizations have changed immensely. In the past decade or so IAML established a more effective structure better suited to the diverse needs of its international community, while RISM is just going through a major restructuring, including a Digital Center in Bern (2021–). The venerable Zentralredaktion in Frankfurt in its present form will shortly fade out, with all its duties and competencies being taken over by a collaborative network of German partner institutions, the RISM Editorial Network. Nonetheless, such ongoing adjustments have only proven the great resilience of both IAML and RISM, which have had to cope with complex challenges our common founding fathers could hardly have envisioned.
With all of that in mind I trust that in 2051 a late successor of mine will once again be asked to contribute a congratulatory letter for IAML’s centenary. And from that distance that late successor will probably decide that a difference of a mere few months hardly matters, after all, and come to the conclusion that IAML and RISM are in fact twins. Which would explain why IAMLites and RISMites can so well guess each other’s most secret thoughts, even if our paths tend literally to cross only at the annual IAML congresses.
Balázs Mikusi
Executive Director
RISM Editorial Center
Category: Events
