New (and first) Library Siglum for Armenia

Monday, February 5, 2018

At RISM we regularly receive requests from scholars, archivists, and librarians for new library sigla to be created. In the course of our daily work, we also stumble upon institutions for which we have no siglum. Such was the case when we read about the Aram Khachaturian Museum in Yerevan, Armenia.

There is now an official RISM siglum for this institution: ARM-Yakm

It is the first RISM siglum for Armenia. The museum holds 18,000 items related to the life and work of Aram Khachaturian (1903–1978): manuscripts, printed editions, books, correspondence, photos, audio/visual materials, ephemera, and more. Among the music manuscripts are piano scores of the First Symphony, the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, and a suite from Masquerade.

RISM assigns an abbreviation, called a library siglum, to institutions that hold materials related to the study of music: usually historical musical sources (such as manuscripts and printed music), but also documents, letters, and archival records. The RISM library sigla make it possible to concisely name institutions without having to cite very long institutional names. Though the RISM online catalog does not include musical sources for every institution with a siglum, the sigla are nevertheless available for scholars to cite in their research.

Image: A postage stamp issued by the Soviet Union (1983) in which a manuscript of Khachaturian’s Sonata-monolog for violin (1975) can be seen. From Wikimedia Commons.

Category: New at RISM