The 2019 Annual Report
Monday, March 2, 2020
The 2019 annual report for the RISM Central Office has now been published. You can read the report in its entirety on the RISM website. Here are some of the highlights:
New Board of Directors: President: Prof. Dr. Klaus Pietschmann, Mainz Vice President: Prof. Dr. Andrea Lindmayr-Brandl, Salzburg Secretary: Dr. Laurent Pugin, Bern Treasurer: Jane Gottlieb, New York
Total records: The RISM online catalog contains records for 1,157,145 musical sources.
Contributions from national groups: The following national groups created new records in Muscat, RISM’s cataloging program: Argentina, Austria, Belgium, China, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Mexico, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, United States.
Plans to import data: RISM imported over 270,000 records from Italy (ICCU), which need to be edited before publication. The first 1,000 records from this import are available in the RISM catalog. Data from the Archivio della cantata italiana (Clori) will be transferred after the ICCU data. Records from RISM France have been received and conversion is underway. There are also plans to import data from the national libraries of Spain, Austria, and Portugal, and the project Seminario de Música en la nueva España y el México independiente at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).
New upgrade of the RISM catalog: At the beginning of September, a new version of the online catalog was released. This time, the focus was on improving the display of and search for printed music editions in accordance with the new templates that were developed for the cataloging interface in Muscat in 2018. These templates contained not only expanded fields for a complete description of the editions, but also records for individual pieces within anthologies. Both RISM contributors and users of the RISM online catalog have certainly noticed that the potential for depth of information has greatly increased and the display has improved. To see what we mean, look at this 1780 edition of Cora by Johann Gottlieb Naumann.
Update on printed music: RISM worked together with the Sächsische Landes- und Universitätsbibliothek (SLUB) in Dresden to update and improve descriptions of printed music in RISM, described above. In total, 2,091 new printed music editions were added as were ca. 11,000 records for pieces in collections. Revising entries of the B/I book of printed anthologies continues thanks to further funding from VD-Musikedition. We hope to complete this by the end of 2020.
Update on Series C: IAML established a successor to the project group Access to Music Archives (AMA) in July 2019 to revise Series C. We are working closely with Maria Aslanidi, Aris Bazmadelis, and Arsinoi Ioannidou, who are also members of RISM Greece, to improve the coverage of institutions worldwide that hold music research materials.
Conference about musical works: Together with the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, the Zentralredaktion organized a conference from 9 to 11 May entitled “Works, Work Titles, Work Authorities: Perspectives on Introducing a Work Level in RISM.” The conference took place at the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur in Mainz. The full program, abstracts, and some recordings of the papers can be found on the RISM website.
Articles mentioning RISM: The RISM project continues to be presented, referenced, and described in publications, including newspapers, scholarly journals, and research articles. Please look at the up-to-date bibliography.
And, as always:
- Corrections welcome: The Zentralredaktion regularly receives suggestions and corrections from users. If you find something that should be corrected, please let us know by sending us your feedback and corrections.
- External databases welcome: RISM is interested in further partnerships with institutions and projects to import data, such as library OPACs or critical editions.
- Open data and linked open data: RISM data can be downloaded directly from the online catalog and reused under a CC-BY license. Libraries can therefore import records for their holdings into local catalogs. The Zentralredaktion has developed tools to simplify the data delivery process, including an SRU interface.
Category: New publications
