A Dedicated Website for the Muscat Project
Laurent Pugin
Thursday, September 27, 2018
We have received the following from Laurent Pugin (RISM Switzerland):
Every RISM working group knows Muscat - it is the familiar interface with which each contributor has catalogued musical sources in the RISM database since 2016. But what is the history and the philosophy of this software project? What are its technical components? What does it offer? In fact, the cataloguing software was not entirely developed from scratch, but brings together a number of features that are all freely accessible, combining and adapting them to the needs of the RISM project. A recently launched, dedicated website offers insight into the development and the different components of Muscat: http://muscat-project.org
Muscat is the web application developed by RISM for cataloguing and publishing descriptions of musical sources. The project was initiated in 2002 by the United Kingdom working group of RISM and then developed further by RISM Switzerland. Since early 2014, Muscat has been developed in collaboration with the RISM Central Office in Frankfurt thanks to the decision of RISM UK and RISM Switzerland to make it open source. Muscat was made available to the entire RISM community with the migration of the full RISM dataset in 2016.
Muscat has nine prominent technical features, including:
- It is based on open source technology.
- It integrates several search options in a full discovery interface.
- The data model is tailored to the needs of RISM and complies with the MARC standard.
- Muscat supports an integrated incipit display and incipit search.
- Users can send comments and feedback to the community directly from Muscat.
- Images can be uploaded directly or via the IIIF standard and displayed in a high-resolution image viewer.
- Muscat keeps track of all changes made to the single records in the database.
- The data is linked to international authority files, such as VIAF.
- Finally, Muscat provides a dynamic visualization on a geographic map of the search results.
Category: RISM Digital Center
