RISM Metadata in Digital Collections

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

The University of Washington Library (US-Su) is the first library in the United States to undertake a project in which RISM metadata are harvested for use in digital collections.*

Their Music Library Digital Scores Collection currently includes digital images of manuscripts held in the Music Library’s Rare Book Collection. The scores date from the 17th-19th centuries, with the majority of the collection containing 17th and 18th-century operas, opera excerpts, and other vocal music. All of the manuscripts are indexed in RISM A/II. The RISM Zentralredaktion provided the metadata for the description of each digitized score as MARC XML files, which were then modified by the library according to the needs of the project.

Similar projects have also been carried out in Germany with digital collections in Karlsruhe, Dresden (click on Musik) and Berlin. The digitized manuscripts are also accessible via RISM’s online catalog directly through links in the respective records.

Please contact us if you would also like to use RISM records from your institution for projects such as digital collections, collection catalogs, or online databases.

*Update, October 2014: When the Juilliard Manuscript Collection was cataloged by the US RISM office in 2008-2010, they sent the RISM records to Juilliard as they completed themso that they could be incorporated into the online catalog of the collection.

(Image courtesy of University of Washington Libraries. Used by permission.)

Category: Library collections