Help RISM Link to Digitized Music

Monday, May 30, 2016

This post was updated in 2021.

The RISM online catalog offers over 18,000 links to digitized music: scores, parts, and printed editions from all around the world. This ease of access to the sources is one of the most popular features of the catalog.

Current RISM contributors add links to digital objects (when available) when creating new RISM records, but there are thousands of older records without links. We at the Central Office try to link to digital collections when we hear about them, but invariably we miss some.

Help us add links to RISM records and broaden exposure to your institution’s holdings! Has your institution undertaken a digital project in recent years? Are the digital surrogates linked to their corresponding RISM records? To check, start an Advanced Search, select the field Library siglum, and enter your institution’s siglum. (To find the siglum, search the Sigla Database). If there are digital scans linked in the records, you will find a link in the filters under Narrow results, then Digitized music (see image).

If RISM hasn’t linked to your scans yet, please alert us to your digital collections so we can do so. For items in the RISM database, send us an Excel spreadsheet of RISM numbers with a permalink to the digital copy (either a direct link to the scan or a bibliographic record that contains a link to the scan):

RISM ID number	Permalink
190023469	http://www2.musik.uu.se/duben/presentationWork.php?Select_Dnr=1096&Select_Wnr=814
290002576	http://digital.slub-dresden.de/id435400657
550509317	http://www.manuscriptorium.com/apps/index.php?direct=record&pid=rep_remake31
900005489	http://juilliardmanuscriptcollection.org/manuscript/siegfried-idyll
00000990000383	http://www.bibliotecamusica.it/cmbm/scripts/gaspari/scheda.asp?id=7078
00000993103826	http://imslp.org/wiki/Special:ReverseLookup/307092

The RISM database contains all of series A/II (mostly music manuscripts but also some printed music, libretti, and treatises), plus all of the A/I series (items printed separately) and years 1500 to 1550 of B/I (printed anthologies).

But wait, there’s more! We are planning to add the remainder of B/I and all of B/II (through the eighteenth century) to the online catalog in the near future, so while you’re at it please send us links to those items as well, but in a separate spreadsheet.

For items from B/I that are not in the online catalog, please make sure to send us the B/I number (a year plus a superscript number) and a permalink. Type the superscript number as a vertical pipe (|) followed by the number in normal type:

B/I number	Permalink
1553|8	http://purl.org/rism/BI/1553/8
1559|2	http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.ihas.200182423/default.html

Items from B/II do not have unique reference numbers. For these, please indicate the title, page number, and permalink:

Title	Page number in B/II	Permalink
Recueil d’Airs sérieux et à boire de différents auteurs ; pour l’année 1713	313	http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k856381j#

Please note:

• We only want to link to complete scans of what your library holds (not a sample of the first few pages or thumbnails/previews)–but if your library’s copy is incomplete, and the incomplete version is scanned, then yes we will link to that.
• Please send us only permalinks.
• Our preference for linking is: (1) to the institution’s own website, (2) to the Internet Archive, (3) to IMSLP. Contact us if your scans are kept elsewhere.
• Permalinks from IMSLP can be retrieved by clicking on the gear icon found at the right side of each file entry and selecting “File permalink.”

Links are gladly accepted on an ongoing basis. If you send us a spreadsheet of links by the end of September 2016, we will be able to add them to the online catalog by the end of the year.

Please send your spreadsheet(s) to: contact@rism.info

If you need any assistance, please let us know and we are happy to help.

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Category: RISM online catalog

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