In the late 2010s, RILM initiated a project to create a digital archive of music zines, prompted by an extensive collection loaned from the Berklee College of Music Library, which faced storage limitations. These zines, originating from the punk subculture, are more than just magazines; they are essential primary sources that document underground music scenes, festivals, and the unfiltered voices of musicians and fans, providing valuable insights into cultural movements and themes like feminism, LGBTQ+ visibility, gender non-conformism, censorship, and political criticism. However, many of these zines remain difficult to find and costly to access.
Muchacha fanzine, no. 17 (2022)
RILM decided to preserve the collection digitally, combining high-quality page images with searchable HTML text. The collection was designed so that researchers can browse issues page by page and search across the collection; it also improves accessibility for users with disabilities. From the beginning, the archive was intended to reflect the international nature of popular music. Beyond the primarily U.S.-based Berklee collection, local zines were licensed from countries including China, Colombia, Spain, and Germany through RILM’s international networks.
实验先锋 China avant-garde music fanzine, vol.1 (2011)
Trust, no. 7 (1999, Germany)
One of the project’s biggest challenges was obtaining rights. Many zine authors were unfamiliar with RILM and digital licensing, making it difficult to explain the project before there was an archive to show them. Identifying rights holders could also be complicated. Once permissions were secured, collecting the actual materials presented another challenge–in actuality, licenses were obtained for only about 20 percent of the Berklee collection. Much of the remaining material came directly from authors, who sometimes had to locate copies through their own networks, while other materials were sourced from institutions. The goal was to preserve each issue as completely as possible, including inserts, advertisements, stickers, flexi discs, and other ephemera. Ideally, digital scans were provided at 400 DPI in grayscale or color. But not every surviving copy is pristine, and it was decided to preserve many imperfections rather than erase them. Creases, faded pages, marks, and other signs of aging are part of the history of the zines. Retaining them preserves not only the zine’s information but also something of the experience of encountering it in its original form.
This scan of an article from Evolution of a race riot, no. 1 (1996) includes creases and other marks of aging.
In May 2025, the RILM Archive of Popular Music Magazines (RAPMM) launched with more than 125 titles, 2,000 issues, and 100,000 pages of content. The collection spanned genres, countries, languages, and decades, featuring articles, interviews, band profiles, album reviews, and record label histories. Building the archive required more than digitizing the publications. RILM developed new conversion workflows, an editorial viewer, and a user platform capable of combining page images, searchable text, and preservation of the complete issue. The result is a growing digital record of popular music history–one that makes previously obscure publications discoverable and gives researchers and readers access to the firsthand voices of musicians, writers, and fans. As new zines are added each year, RAPMM continues to expand, preserving the diverse stories and communities that have shaped popular music.
Bases of RILM’s international committees and partnerships.
RILM also works with UNESCO as an accredited non-governmental organization and civil society partner dedicated to preserving and safeguarding the world’s musical heritage. In addition, colleges and universities worldwide subscribe to RILM’s resources. Although North American and European institutions constitute the majority of its subscribers, RILM also has a significant presence in countries such as Japan, South Africa, and China. Japan, for example, has developed its own digital database for collecting and publishing information on academic literature related to music in the country.
RILM’s interconnected framework effectively reduces regional and linguistic barriers in music research, facilitating global access to vital musical knowledge. By integrating localized expertise with a comprehensive digital infrastructure, RILM connects international societies, specialized archives, and national committees, enabling researchers to easily explore a wide range of musical genres–from 14th century European polyphony to Punjabi folk music and contemporary hip hop.
RILM staff periodically contribute writings to EBSCOpost, a lively blog run by our partners that publishes pieces pertinent to librarianship, higher education, and beyond. Over time, some of these posts are removed, and even those that remain generally recede from view, following the ephemeral nature of much digital content. With 60 years of preserving the world’s writings on music and music-related topics behind us, we are now adding a small rescue project: bringing these blog posts back into circulation. However modest, they help document our history as an organization, and we hope they will continue to resonate with our international readership as well as with any music enthusiast who happens upon them.
In this installment, Executive Director Tina Frühauf ruminates on the place of music reference at a time when Wikipedia was changing how information was being generated, shared, and networked. Now 25 years after the platform’s release, the piece remains relevant, as the possibilities and potential dangers surrounding digital access points to knowledge, musical and otherwise, continue to surface in the context of generative AI and large language models (LLMs).
Why music reference still matters in the age of Wikipedia
The field of music reference has evolved continuously since the 1768 publication of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Dictionnaire de musique. But the advent of Wikipedia in 2001 has had a dramatic impact on this hitherto gradual evolutionary process in terms of format, authorship, and editorial structures. Assessments of Wikipedia’s impact differ widely, from the view of Wikipedia as a means and medium of internationality to complaints about Wikipedia’s elimination of the individual and avoidance of editorial control mechanisms. Whether Wikipedia strikes you as a net benefit or loss, it has triggered important questions as to how future reference works and bibliographies can and should be made accessible, to whom, and with what features. Technology has changed how much can be accomplished and how far one can reach. But where does all this leave musicologists and music librarians? Printed reference works are organisms in themselves, reflective of their time and culture, region and subject matter. Technology has the ability to transform each organism into a universe of musical reference works and bibliographies, easily accessible in multiple languages and across cultural and other divides. More concretely, technology can create such a universe by facilitating cross-database searching, hyperlinking, and complex keyword searches, while maintaining the identity and specificity of reference works as individual organisms. Indeed, why, in the age of advanced information technology, should one reference work exist without the other? Such a communal approach was first put forth by Wikipedia, but neither thought through nor further developed beyond the issues of open access and open authorship. Ideally, digital archives should not aim toward completeness and a global perspective, but toward carefully curated content by means of 21st-century technology.
With technological advances, currency becomes an important matter as well. But as music researchers continue to rely on established and existing reference sources and bibliographies for research on individuals and subjects not included in modern encyclopedias, and for historiographical work which compares the representation of individuals and subjects over time, “old” encyclopedias have now received the ability to become new encyclopedias for the digital age.
In the longue durée, music reference works have always been reflective of their time and location, and also of their editors and users. The aforementioned Rousseau Dictionnaire is a case in point, as it has been deemed both radical and traditional at the same time—radical, as Rousseau advanced philosophy on opera and revealed his rejection of French musical tradition; traditional, as he held on to existing categories—music as art and music as science—and views on music theory accepted in the 18th century. This presence of two (or more) distinct strands or “voices” can be best understood as a reflection of the dialogue process in the formation of musical ideas.
RILM supports such dialogue by comprehensively and accurately representing music scholarship in all countries and languages, and across all disciplinary and cultural boundaries. If you think your faculty and students could benefit from the kind of resources RILM provides, I invite you visit our website to learn more.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Dictionnaire de musique (Paris: Veuve Duchesne, 1775), one of the many historic reference works available in RILM Music Encyclopedias.
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RILM staff periodically contribute writings to EBSCOpost, a lively blog run by our partners that publishes pieces pertinent to librarianship, higher education, and beyond. Over time, some of these posts are removed, and even those that remain generally recede from view, following the ephemeral nature of much digital content. With 60 years of preserving the world’s writings on music and music-related topics behind us, we are now adding a small rescue project: bringing these blog posts back into circulation. However modest, they help document our history as an organization, and we hope they will continue to resonate with our international readership as well as with any music enthusiast who happens upon them.
Much has happened in the three years since this was published. Originally intended to explore why a well-crafted abstract remains essential to discovery, its advice has aged well: in an era when AI can generate a convincing academic abstract in seconds, precision, specificity, and accuracy matter more than ever, not only for human researchers, but also for the AI systems increasingly helping them find and understand scholarship.
The power of abstracts in music research
The sources available for musicological research accumulate at an accelerated pace. And as they do, the ability to quickly identify and select what is most pertinent for a research project becomes paramount. Fortunately, there is a simple and robust tool that is particularly adept at isolating what is useful to researchers within this modern environment crowded with digital noise, a tool that makes a seemingly daunting process more manageable.
Enter the mighty abstract: the (often underappreciated) protagonist in music research that instantly, indefatigably, and incessantly shuttles musical ideas across vast regions to research communities worldwide. It is hard to overstate the value of a well-crafted abstract. Even the most compelling and well-publicized scholarship will likely fail to reach a broad audience without a concise conveyal of its most important ideas. Academic research is typically the result of a substantial investment in time, energy, and a multitude of resources. However, without reducing or sidelining in any way the importance of the project itself, be it a publication or a lecture, in reality, more people will read the abstract, as an initial point of entry, than experience the finished product.
Abstracts do a great deal of heavy lifting, particularly in the initial stages of a research project. As most music scholars know all too well, a captivating abstract can inspire and pique readers’ interests, resulting in presentations being chosen for conferences, book proposals being accepted by publishers, articles being selected for inclusion in periodicals, and program notes getting offered space to elucidate a performance. Despite its brevity, rather in great measure because of it, a well-constructed abstract is perhaps more effective than any other form of writing to express and share its author’s most innovative ideas.
Additionally, the benefits of becoming fluent with the techniques and rules for writing an effective abstract extend well beyond individual interest, achievement, or professional development. This skill brings value to the sphere of social good, equity, inclusion, and equality. When crafted well, an abstract’s valuable ideas stand a much better chance of becoming widely circulated, benefitting an extensive, truly global community of music researchers. In a global context where access to writings on music varies considerably across geographic regions, abstracts transcend such restrictions, traveling lighter to make the free-flowing exchange of ideas more equitable. Abstracts open doors and break barriers, and as one of the most powerful means available to communicate key concepts succinctly, their role in the research and publication process is essential and wide-reaching.
With this in mind, the following guidelines and examples, taken from Chapter 15 of the third edition of How to Write About Music: The RILM Manual of Style (2023), provides best practices, helpful approaches, clear examples, and missteps to avoid when writing an abstract, from the perspective of an organization that has consistently aimed to represent all the world’s music equally and equitably. From the staff working at the International Center in New York City to committee members located around the world, RILM’s collaborative, global network remains more committed than ever to the dissemination of music scholarship from every country. Since RILM’s focus is on music, the guidelines below are specifically suited for scholarship on this subject and related fields. However, it should be emphasized that, just as RILM has followed the discipline of musicology in becoming more and more interdisciplinary, many of the preferred conventions below will be appropriate (and even preferable) for other fields in the arts and humanities as well.
For more information and purchase options for the e-book How to Write About Music: The RILM Manual of Style, Third Edition, as well as to learn about our forthcoming fourth edition, head to https://www.rilm.org/publications/publication-RilmManual/.
An abstract ought to convey every important aspect of the writing it describes. Nonessential matters should be omitted so as not to mislead the reader.
Do not spend too much time describing the item’s intellectual background; it is more important to deal with its content. If you are presenting new findings, concentrate on them and do not rehearse the known facts. State clearly the main conclusion or conclusions given in the item being abstracted (although not all research yields specific conclusions). Providing concrete information such as personal names, places, and names of organizations is always a desideratum as long as the item gives substantial information about them. If you are referring to a manuscript, give its present location (institution and complete shelf number). If you are referring to specific musical or scholarly works, give their full titles. If you are referring to one or more elements of a work, indicate where they are found in the longer work. Indicate the time period under discussion as precisely as possible. If you use unusual terms, define them. If you are dealing with pedagogy, indicate the level of education concerned.
Style
Avoid colloquial or informal language and write in complete sentences. Do not include personal views on the value of the item being abstracted. Many effective abstracts resemble a single well-shaped paragraph, with topic sentence, development, and conclusion. Writing in the voice of the author (declaratively) yields a more vivid abstract than does describing the author’s work and lends itself to specificity.
Checklist for abstractors
All abstracts should supply the following:
First names of all authors, translators, collaborators, and subjects, except for very well-known persons.
Complete titles of musical works in the original language, with index or opus numbers in their correct form. (Give original-language titles for works only when the work has a given title, however; see 10.2: Generic titles.)
Complete names of all associations, societies, performing groups, religious bodies, and academic and government institutions in the language of their country.
For manuscripts, location and shelf number, with RISM siglum for the library.
Definitions of terms not in standard music reference works.
Complete and correct place names in their appropriate historical form. Add current forms in parentheses when referring to an earlier time, e.g., Pressburg (now Bratislava).
Basic bibliographic information (place and date of publication) for publications referred to.
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RILM’s YouTube channel is a valuable resource for music researchers, providing expert guidance on navigating its global bibliography, music encyclopedias, and research tools. The channel features tutorials, webinars, and step-by-step demonstrations covering core resources such as RILM Abstracts with Full Text, MGG Online, the RILM Archive of Printed Music Magazines (RAPMM), DEUMM Online, and RILM Music Encyclopedias, along with short videos highlighting key features, including effective search strategies and viewing tools. Besides research instruction, the channel also showcases videos on events, interviews, product launches, and institutional updates. Whether you’re exploring a particular musical genre, topic, or region or simply looking to strengthen your research skills, RILM’s YouTube channel offers practical support to help you get the most from its resources.
The playlists tab makes it easy to browse videos organized by resource, topic, or methodology, allowing you to quickly find content relevant to your interests. New videos are added regularly, so be sure to check back often for the latest updates.
Below are some of the RILM channel’s most popular videos:
RAPMM: An Introduction
RILM Abstracts with Full Text: An Introduction
An Introduction to RILM Abstracts
MGG Online: The Basics
DEUMM Online trailer in Italian
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In celebration of the 60th anniversary of Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM), we proudly present a short documentary film. Narrated by Executive Director Tina Frühauf and Executive Editor Zdravko Blažeković, and featuring several current and former RILM staff members, it explores RILM’s history, mission, and evolving role in music scholarship and cultural preservation.
As the film recounts RILM’s evolution from an ambitious vision to an international organization that occupies a unique place within the humanities, it explores ideas that have shaped RILM over six decades: a commitment to documenting the world’s musical and scholarly traditions in all their diversity, and an eagerness to embrace technological innovation, from the computer to generative artificial intelligence. Recent developments, including RILM’s recognition as a UNESCO-accredited NGO, also suggest directions for the organization’s future.
RILM serves a global music research community through an expansive range of bibliographic resources. This film offers a glimpse of the people and ideas that lie behind this endeavor. We hope you enjoy it.
To learn more about RILM and its resources, please visit www.rilm.org.
The four R projects emerged from the efforts of scholars, archivists, librarians, and musicians to create research tools that provide access to key sources of musical heritage and culture. These sources include musical works preserved in manuscripts and printed editions, historical and contemporary writings on music, and visual representations of music and musical performance. Recognizing that a vast body of music-related literature and iconography remained largely unexplored, the International Musicological Society (IMS) and the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres (IAML) jointly sponsored the development of the R-projects. The purpose was to create bibliographic research tools that identify, document, and facilitate access to this extensive collection of primary sources.
Below are short descriptions of the four R projects:
The Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM), or International Inventory of Musical Sources, is dedicated to identifying, documenting, and providing access to musical sources worldwide. Through a network of independent national working groups, RISM catalogs printed music published before 1800, music manuscripts dating from after 1600, as well as libretti, theoretical treatises, and other music-related documents. These records are consolidated and standardized by the RISM Zentralredaktion (Central Editorial Office) in Germany, before being prepared for publication.
The Répertoire International d’Iconographie Musicale (RIdIM), or International Inventory of Musical Iconography, based in Switzerland, is dedicated to documenting and studying visual materials related to music, dance, theatre, and opera. To support research in musical iconography, RIdIM publishes catalogues, scholarly studies, and a newsletter and sponsors the annual scholarly yearbook Imago musicae, published in collaboration with Libreria Musicale Italiana.
The most recent of the four R-projects is the Répertoire International de la Presse Musicale (RIPM), or Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals (1800–1950). Established in 1980, RIPM was created to provide comprehensive access to historical music periodicals and to promote research based on this rich but often overlooked body of documentary evidence. By indexing and making available music-related journals and newspapers, RIPM has become an essential resource for scholars investigating the musical, cultural, and intellectual history of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM) publishes a range of digital resources that support the global music research community. Its flagship publication, RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, is a comprehensive bibliography of scholarly and professional writings on music. Other resources, such as the RILM Index to Scores and Collected Editions (RISE), provide digital tools for locating specific musical works within collected editions, anthologies, and series. RILM also offers specialized reference and archival resources. The RILM Archive of Popular Music Magazines (RAPMM) is an extensive and continually expanding digital collection of independently published popular music magazines and fanzines, spanning the late 1960s to the present. RILM Music Encyclopedias brings together a growing collection of full-text music reference works, while DEUMM Online provides access to the most comprehensive modern music dictionary in the Italian language. In addition, RILM hosts MGG Online on its platform, offering authoritative and up-to-date information on a wide range of music-related topics, including musicians, genres, historical periods, and scholarly concepts. RILM also now owns the Hofmeister XIX database.
In the late 1990s, RILM began the development of a new editorial database system designed to modernize its bibliographic indexing operations. This project eventually became iBis–the Internet Bibliographic Indexing System–a web-based platform that fundamentally changed how RILM manages, edits, and shares its data. Developed by SoftWhite, Inc., a New York–based software company, iBis was designed by lead programmers Rick White and Will Limratana using a SQL Server database and a web-based interface built in ASP/VB. The system replaced existing workflows with a centralized, more efficient platform capable of supporting RILM’s expanding international network.
Development experienced significant challenges and delays due in part to the events of 11 September 2001. SoftWhite’s offices were located adjacent to the World Trade Center, preventing the development team from accessing their workplace for an extended period following the attacks. As a result, the anticipated launch schedule was pushed back considerably. Despite these setbacks, the vision for the new system remained clear. The International Center anticipated significant gains in productivity through IBis features such as automatic defaulting from authority lists, the ability to view abstracts while indexing records, and advanced filtering tools that would allow editors to focus on records within their areas of expertise. The system was also designed to support direct participation from national committees, enabling them to enter records into the database over the Internet while accessing RILM’s authority files and editorial tools in real time. This promised to improve data consistency, reduce duplication of effort, and eliminate the need for rekeying records at the International Center.
Screen shot of a form for accessing abstracts in the first iteration of iBis.
After several years of development, iBis entered beta testing in 2003. Editors at the International Center spent several weeks working simultaneously in both the old and new systems to ensure that the platform functioned as intended. The successful testing period paved the way for a full transition to iBis in August 2003. The move brought immediate benefits. One of the most important advances was the ability to output data in Unicode, allowing the accurate display of diacritical characters from languages around the world. While not all RILM’s publishing and distribution partners were prepared to support Unicode at the time, the transition represented a major step toward more accurate representation of international scholarship.
Furthermore, expanded access for national committees through iBis meant that committees would be able not only to create new records but also to modify existing ones directly within the database. Development of this committee access level was scheduled to follow shortly after the system’s launch, with testing planned in the months ahead. The final phase of development focused on creating tools that would support the export of data for RILM’s printed volumes.
Early iBis logo.
The launch of iBis at the International Center represented a milestone in RILM’s technological evolution. Although some components–specifically a new print production module–remained under development, the core system quickly showed its value. Twelve national committees adopted the new editorial database system during its initial rollout, joining the editorial staff in using iBis for their daily work. RILM envisioned expanding participation so that many national committees could work directly within the platform. To achieve this goal, ongoing refinements were planned to make the interface as efficient and user-friendly as possible. The successful implementation of iBis was aided by the contributions of numerous collaborators, including Lenore Coral and Julie Schnepel, who tested the system on behalf of the national committees and provided valuable feedback that helped shape its development. By storing data in Unicode and providing web-based access to editorial tools, authority files, and bibliographic records, iBis established a foundation for a more connected and efficient RILM.
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The Hofmeister XIX database provides searchable access to more than 330,000 bibliographic records from the Hofmeister Monatsberichte, published between 1829 and 1900. As a major primary source for the study of 19th century music publishing, repertoire, and musical taste, the database includes records of music scores, music-related books, periodicals, portraits, and other ephemera, with a primary focus on Germany and Austria. A digital version of Friedrich Hofmeister’sMusikalisch-literarischer Monatsbericht, the database allows users to search by composer, title, publisher, and year. This enables researchers to trace publication histories and examine trends in 19th century musical repertoire and publishing practices.
The Hofmeister XIX database was developed by Royal Holloway, University of London and King’s College London Department of Digital Humanities under the leadership of musicologists Nicholas Cook and Liz Robinson, with support from the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. Since 2007, the project has provided open-access resources for music librarians, scholars, and researchers worldwide. Ownership of the database has since been transferred to RILM, which is committed to maintaining its long-term accessibility, preserving the database’s scholarly integrity, and continuing to recognize the contributions of the founding institutions while upholding the high standards associated with Hofmeister XIX.
With the development of Egret, RILM expanded its role to become a comprehensive service provider in music research and publishing. Egret serves as RILM’s advanced platform for hosting, editing, and distributing full-text music reference works, offering a range of innovative tools designed to improve accessibility and usability for researchers worldwide. Among its key features is a bilingual English and German interface, along with integrated Google Translate functionality that enables instant translation into more than 100 languages. The platform also includes visual search capabilities, such as the MGG Online Timeline, helping users explore content in an intuitive and interactive way.
Egret also enhances the research experience through traceable browsing history, allowing users to quickly revisit previously viewed material, as well as sortable works lists, bibliographies, discographies, and related reference data. Users can seamlessly switch between original and updated content, ensuring transparency and scholarly accuracy. Additionally, the platform offers extensive cross-referencing tools that connect related material across Egret products, including RILM Music Encyclopedias, DEUMM Online, and the RILM Archive of Popular Music Magazines, and provides direct links to relevant resources in RILM Abstracts of Music Literature and other databases. Designed for modern accessibility, Egret is fully compatible with mobile and tablet devices and supports sophisticated XML-based data editing and tagging, making it a powerful and flexible environment for digital music scholarship.
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