The Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM) - International Inventory of Musical Sources - is an international, non-profit organization that aims to comprehensively document extant musical sources worldwide: manuscripts, printed music editions, writings on music theory, and libretti that are found in libraries, archives, churches, schools, and private collections. RISM’s over 1.5 million records can be searched at no cost through the RISM Catalog and RISM Online. RISM was founded in Paris in 1952 and is the largest and only global organization that documents written musical sources. RISM records what exists and where it can be found.

RISM Cataloging Guidelines

RISM's cataloging guidelines are now available at guidelines.rism.info.

Library Sigla

Search RISM’s abbreviations for libraries, archives and collections with historical music holdings

RISM for Libraries

Librarians, see here what RISM has to offer you

Muscat

All about Muscat, RISM’s specialized program for cataloging musical sources

News

Annual Report 2024

At the time of delivering this report, RISM is in the middle of a two-year phase of transition. While in 2024–25 the Editorial Center in Frankfurt am Main is still financed under the auspices of the German Akademienprogramm, it is now operating on a reduced budget and must intensively be...

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RISM Online Winter 2025 Update

The Winter 2025 Update for RISM Online brings with it a whole array of new features, improvements, and bug fixes. This update has been in development since August of 2024, and we hope you will find the changes useful. Cantus Database Integration RISM Online will now provide results from the...

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International Women's Day: Women Composers in RISM

In 2017 we celebrated the International Women’s Day by publishing a list of all women composers found in the RISM database. Following a 2021 update, it is time to yet again publish a revised list to reflect RISM’s ever more complete coverage. The list that in 2017 included 800 names,...

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New Website for RISM Cataloging Guidelines

The RISM Editorial Center announces the publication of the RISM Cataloging Guidelines on a dedicated website developed by the RISM Digital Center, guidelines.rism.info. The guidelines are RISM’s rules and procedures for describing historical musical sources, and are adapted for use in the cataloging program Muscat which is used by RISM...

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The Musical Public Domain in 2025

The Roaring Twenties have finally completely arrived! On 1 January 2025, works published in 1929 entered the public domain in the United States, making publications from the 1920s free to use, at least in the US. In law, the phrase “public domain” refers to works without copyright, usually because copyright...

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All the news

RISM Cataloging Guidelines

RISM's cataloging guidelines are now available at guidelines.rism.info.

Library Sigla

Search RISM’s abbreviations for libraries, archives and collections with historical music holdings

RISM for Libraries

Librarians, see here what RISM has to offer you

Muscat

All about Muscat, RISM’s specialized program for cataloging musical sources