The new RISM Consortium
Thursday, October 1, 2026
Since its foundation in 1952, the structure of RISM has seen several adjustments, but the past few years proved especially eventful in this regard. In 2021 the Swiss working group was reorganized as a Digital Center, and as such became the closest partner of the long-standing Editorial Center (Zentralredaktion). The latter, in turn, had to close its doors during the summer of 2026, handing over its core activities to a newly founded RISM Editorial Network. These two substantial changes have made RISM both more international (with the addition of a new center in Switzerland) and decentralized (with the distribution of the editorial work across a network of institutions), and these two tendencies are now being furthered by the foundation of a RISM Consortium. The Consortium is meant to bring together institutions from around the world willing to support RISM’s work not only by contributing data to the central database (as the traditional RISM working groups in several countries have long been doing), but by a direct financial contribution that should help us maintain RISM’s infrastructure as a whole, or realize additional projects that require considerable work capacity.
Following ongoing preliminary discussions, it was decided to found the RISM Consortium as an association in Switzerland, relying on the RISM Digital Center in Bern as its administrative office. The festive founding event took place on 24 September 2026 at Chopin’s birthplace Żelazowa Wola, generously hosted by the Fryderyk Chopin Institute of Warsaw. As part of the ceremony, several members signed the accession agreement to join the consortium on the spot, while some others had already done so beforehand, thanks to which the Consortium now already has seven members (listed here in alphabetical order):
• Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library, Harvard University
• Fryderyk Chopin Institute, Warsaw
• International Mozarteum Foundation, Salzburg
• National Library of the Czech Republic
• Stanford University Libraries
• University of Toronto Libraries
• Yale University Library
We are pleased also to report that a few other institutions – among them the Swiss National Library and the University of Warsaw Library – are just about to officially join as well. According to an agreement made during the preparatory meetings, all institutions that become members until the end of this year will be considered as founding members of the RISM Consortium.
The participants of the festive founding event (Photo: © Małgorzata Kazur)
The first full meeting of the Consortium will take place during the annual IAML congress to be held in June 2027 in Toronto, where the first official board will also be elected. Until then the Consortium is lead by an initial Board consisting of one representative each from the RISM Commission mixte (Sonia Wronkowska), the RISM Digital Center (Laurent Pugin), and the RISM Editorial Network (Balázs Mikusi) as the initiators of the Consortium, as well as Armin Brinzing (International Mozarteum Foundation) as the representative of the joining members.
We encourage all institutions invested in the long-term future of RISM to consider joining the new Consortium, even as a founding member. Any questions regarding this opportunity, or the Consortium in general, should be sent directly to Laurent Pugin as acting President at laurent.pugin@rism.digital or to RISM’s general contact address contact@rism.info.
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