First RISM Siglum for Papua New Guinea
Monday, March 23, 2020
Part of our work at RISM includes creating new library sigla for any institution worldwide that holds material related to music research. We regularly receive requests from scholars, archivists, and librarians every month. In the course of our daily work, we also stumble upon institutions for which we have no siglum.
A recent article by Maureen Russell in Music Reference Services Quarterly alerted us to the existence of the Music Archive at the Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies. In the article, she interviews the director, Dr. Don Niles. The strength of the Music Archive, which was founded in 1974, is its collection of 12,000 hours of recordings, as well as a large collection of photographs and books. The earliest sound recordings date as far back as 1898. The Music Archive is also concerned with dance and oral history.
The new RISM siglum is: PNG-Bpngs. This is our first siglum for Papua New Guinea. It can be found in the Online Directory of RISM Library Sigla.
About RISM sigla
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.
Do you need a siglum?
Please contact us if you need a RISM siglum for your research. We will create one for you.
Image: Flag of Papua New Guinea, from Wikimedia Commons.
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