New Sources from Canada in RISM

Becky Shaw

Monday, January 21, 2019

The following is by Becky Shaw (Dalhousie University):

The Killam Memorial Library at Dalhousie University (Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada; CDN-Hu) is pleased to announce the addition of their music manuscripts and first edition publications to RISM. These materials are located within the University Archive collection at the Library and their addition to RISM was part of a larger project to increase accessibility to these items, undertaken by Rebecca Shaw (a Student Intern at the Archives).

Music is one of several areas addressed in the University Archives’ collection mandate. We hold a limited number of significant manuscripts and first edition publications. These items include the graphic score for “Nasca Lines” (2001) by Barry Guy, written for the contemporary Halifax-based Upstream Ensemble; the manuscript of Heitor Villa-Lobos’s first piano concerto (1956), written for the Canadian pianist Ellen Ballon; various first-edition publications of piano pieces by Chopin, collected by Ballon; a first-edition publication of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major, K.488, previously owned by Clara Schumann and Ballon; and manuscripts of songs by the Halifax-based suffragette Edith J. Archibald (1856-1938). Many of these items are fully digitized and available through the University Archives’ catalogue, along with other related materials (e.g., letters, photographs, programs). These digitized musical items are also fully catalogued in RISM.

As part of this project, we also developed guidelines for transferring descriptive metadata from the Canadian standard for archival description (Rules for Archival Description, or RAD) to MARC. These instructions are available in our Documentation Wiki, and include general instructions for adding descriptions to RISM from RAD (or another archival standard); specific instructions for music manuscripts; and instructions for published music. We hope that these guidelines will be of use to other archival institutions, both within Canada and internationally.

Image: Heitor Villa-Lobos, Concerto para piano e orquestra (1945), RISM ID no.: 1001044620

Category: Library collections