The 2014 Annual Report

Thursday, March 5, 2015

The annual report for 2014 has been posted to the RISM website. Did you know that thanks to the hard work of our colleagues–in over 35 countries around the world–there are over 880,000 records in the online database?

Other highlights from 2014:

• The CD-ROM data for series A/I (Einzeldrucke vor 1800/Individual Prints before 1800) were transferred to the RISM database and will be published in the RISM online catalog in early 2015.

• For volume B/I (Recueils imprimés, XVIe-XVIIe siècles/Printed collections of the 16th-18th centuries), Howard Mayer Brown had prepared a revision of the entries for sources published between 1500 and 1550. Instead of appearing in book form, the revisions are scheduled to be published in the online catalog in early 2015.

• An agreement has been made with the IAML working group Access to Music Archives to revise series C, Directory of Music Research Libraries, which will be edited and published as an online database.

• The following national groups created records using Kallisto in 2014: Austria, Canada, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Ukraine, United Sates, and Venezuela.

• In addition to working closely with national groups, RISM enjoys ongoing partnerships with the:
• German Historical Institute in Rome to undertake work on the collections of two Roman princely houses
• Richard Strauss Quellenverzeichnis to have the descriptions of musical sources contained on their website also appear in the RISM online catalog
• Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin to have their collection of autograph manuscripts digitized and described using RISM’s software (a DFG KoFIM project)

• Archivio della cantata italiana (Clori) to transfer data from their database

• On average, the online catalog was visited by about 6,500 people per month, a total of 85,500 people in 2014 with 288,000 page views.

• The new version of the online catalog, released in April, has a filter to limit the results to records with links to digitized items, allowing users direct access to images of the source. There are currently ca. 12,000 such links in the catalog.

• The data in the online catalog were made available as linked open data with the new release of the catalog in April. This service is directed at libraries that wish to import their records into local catalogs, or musicological projects that want to make a catalog of sources that covers a specific topic as a basis for research. The Central Office has developed tools to simplify the data delivery process, including an SRU interface. It is RISM’s wish that users take advantage of these services in order to share corrections or supplemental information with the Central Office. Additional tools will be developed for this.

• With the development of the new cataloging program Muscat, being carried out in cooperation with the Swiss working group, enough progress was made that a test version could be sent to the Coordinating Committee.

Here’s to continued success in 2015!

Category: New publications