RILM has long been committed to documenting, safeguarding, and preserving the world’s knowledge about all musical traditions, and to making this knowledge accessible to research and performance communities worldwide via digital collections and advanced tools. RILM’s collections aim to include the music scholarship of all countries, in all languages, and across all disciplinary and cultural boundaries, thereby fostering research in the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences. In recent years, RILM has launched various full-text resources and developed the Egret platform, enhancing its technological capabilities. The recent addition of DEUMM Online to RILM’s suite of resources, as well as the RILM Archive of Popular Music Magazines (RAPMM) in the Summer of 2025, further solidifies its key position in the music research sector.
In 2024, RILM received accreditation from UNESCO to provide advisory services to the Committee of Intangible Cultural Heritage. The following year, it was further recognized as a civil society partner under the 2005 UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. These distinctions confer upon RILM an expanded responsibility that extends beyond dissemination and documentation, emphasizing its role in safeguarding and preserving all forms of musical knowledge in written form. The UNESCO accreditation also creates new opportunities for the organization, which has already demonstrated its global reach and expertise through participation in the UNESCO World Conference on Culture and Arts Education 2024.
Partnerships with institutions such as the National College of Arts in Lahore, the Institut du monde arabe in Paris, and the Central Conservatory in Beijing underscore RILM’s commitment to inclusivity and diversity. These collaborations ensure that RILM’s collections encompass music scholarship from all countries, in all languages, and across cultural boundaries.
From its beginnings nearly 60 years ago, RILM modeled itself on a United Nations-like structure whereby international committees were established to provide the organization with the information it would need to make its bibliography truly international. This endeavor and the internationalization that has come with it, has been rare in the humanities then and now.
