News archive – RISM online catalog
2019 Upgrade of the RISM Catalog
RISM and the Bavarian State Library (BSB, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek) announce a major upgrade of the RISM online catalog at https://opac.rism.info/. One year ago, the RISM Catalog interface was redesigned and many improvements were added. Today’s release comes one year after that major upgrade. The main focus of development was on...
9 September 2019
Search Strategies for Printed Music
Printed music is one of the “classic” RISM sources, with a long RISM tradition alongside music manuscripts, libretti, and treatises. Searching for printed music in the RISM catalog has only been possible since 2015, when printed editions by a single composer (to 1800) were added along with anthologies printed between...
25 March 2019
Searching for People in the New RISM Catalog
The new version of the RISM catalog that was released over the summer has opened up the possibility to do a detailed search for the people that appear in RISM records: composers, publishers, singers, instrumentalists, dedicatees, etc. Though we are working on making this tool more intuitive to use, we...
22 October 2018
New Version of the RISM Online Catalog
RISM and the Bavarian State Library (BSB, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek) announce the release of a new version of the RISM online catalog at https://opac.rism.info/. This release represents the first phase of a development project that will include additional new features in the upcoming months. Today’s release is therefore an initial step...
16 July 2018
Music in Different Languages for International Mother Language Day
Today, February 21, is officially International Mother Language Day. This day was first commemorated in 2000 by the United Nations in order to highlight the significance of native languages as a cultural asset and to foster the linguistic and cultural diversity of people around the world. Over 6,000 languages are...
21 February 2018
Liturgical Festivals in the RISM Database with Three Examples
These holidays are familiar to many: saint’s feast days, the celebration of name days, and the Christian holidays such as Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. But did you know that the Church also celebrates historical events such as the Exaltation of the Holy Cross? One clear example of the significance of...
7 August 2017
Deciphered any initials today?
The following article is by Martin Bierwisch, a student worker at the Central Office. From time to time, diligent users of the RISM online catalog send us information regarding the identification of pieces, particularly printed editions, where the composers are named only by initials (these are the pieces with A/I...
10 July 2017
The Fifth Field
Here’s a trick to help you get more out of searching in the RISM online catalog. You might not have even noticed it before. In our online survey, we heard from many of you that you wish you could add more search fields in the Advanced search. Well, you can,...
10 May 2017
How to Cite RISM Records
This post was updated in 2022. RISM is happy when scholars cite RISM records in their publications. Here we’ll show you how to do that. RISM ID number: To cite musical sources that have records in the RISM online catalog, use the RISM ID number. This number appears in the...
2 March 2017
Length of RISM Catalog Sessions Increased
We are pleased to announce that the length of sessions for the RISM online catalog has been increased: now your session will expire after 25 minutes of inactivity. This is an improvement from the previous situation, where we heard from some users that sessions were expiring after just a few...
20 February 2017
