Tag Archives: RILM history

by | July 31, 2026 · 6:00 am

RILM celebrates 60 years of global music research with a new film

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.

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by | June 2, 2026 · 6:00 am

RILM’s first digital platform

From its inception in the mid-1960s, it was clear that a sophisticated set of computer programs would be essential to achieve the goals of the newly established RILM project. Automation was the buzzword of the day, with the American Council of Learned Societies collaborating with New York University’s Institute for Computer Research in the Humanities to integrate it across various sectors. However, when RILM’s founder, Barry S. Brook, presented his programming specifications to the Director of the Institute detailing the need for various fonts, accents, indexing, and features like random inputting and automatic numbering of abstracts, the response was far from optimistic. Despite RILM being set to launch in just six months, Brook was told that developing such a program would take approximately three years.

Core memory array of an IBM S/360 with transistor driver boards. (Image courtesy of Ken Shirriff’s blog)

At the time, Brook was also collaborating on a digital musical analysis program at Queen’s College with Richard Golden, a computer science student whom Brook described as “one of those whiz kids who seemed to have been born inside an IBM 360”. After hearing Brook’s specifications for the RILM platform, Golden spent three days pondering the challenge before presenting Brook with a solution in the form of scribbled diagrams and notes. Although Golden could not finish all the software before the publication of the first RILM issue, he successfully completed the programming for the crucial author and subject indexes. Soon after, a fully functional set of programs was up and running, including a custom-built, oversized keyboard that featured four different fonts, all possible accents, compound letters, foreign symbols, and even musical notation. Given that most keyboards at the time only supported capital letters and a single font, the creation of this keyboard was a remarkable feat. It also allowed for editing to be done directly on the computer screen, eliminating the need to sift through complex codes.

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by | March 31, 2026 · 6:00 am

An early RILM abstract card

In the early 1960s, Barry S. Brook created a standardized form that RILM’s New York offices used to collect abstracts. Printed on thin, color-coded paper, these forms enabled RILM’s first editors to organize and edit submissions efficiently. Each color represented a different language: green for German, yellow for English, orange for Italian, pink for Spanish, and red for Russian. RILM distributed these forms worldwide. As Executive Editor Zdravko Blazeković recalls, the forms were a familiar sight on university campuses around the globe–he first encountered them as a graduate student in Zagreb, long before he later joined RILM in New York.

Editors first filled out the paper forms by hand before transferring the information into an IBM SG360 computer. Used from 1965 to 1978, the SG360 was the first family of computers designed to support both commercial and scientific applications, offering models that ranged from small entry-level systems to large mainframes. The early data-entry program the editors worked with was WYLBUR, a text editor and word processor introduced in 1967. Beyond RILM, WYLBUR was also used at institutions such as the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), and numerous other sites.

An IBM SG360 computer (mid-1960s).

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by | March 17, 2026 · 6:00 am

From the archives: RILM’s use of the IBM Selectric

While the production of RILM Abstracts has consistently depended on computing technology, the systems available in the 1960s and 1970s were unable to fully support its multilingual and multicultural mission. Even the advanced IBM System/370 mainframe, employed between 1970 and 1988, offered only limited functionality for rendering diverse fonts, writing systems, and diacritical marks. From its founding in 1966, however, RILM prioritized the accurate representation of names and terms–including their display in original scripts–as a central objective.

During the 1960s and 1970s, RILM’s Soviet national committee made significant contributions by supplying many records of Russian-language publications. Because the IBM System/370 mainframe could not render authors’ names and titles in Cyrillic script, RILM editors turned instead to the IBM Selectric typewriter, introduced in 1961. The Selectric quickly became a commercial success, with IBM receiving four times the anticipated number of orders within its first year.

IBM Selectric’s typeballs.

The Selectric’s distinctive typeball–a rotating mechanism resembling a golf ball–improved both typing efficiency and the visual quality of text. Its capacity to switch between multiple fonts and alphabets within seconds anticipated the flexibility of later word processors and personal computers. For RILM editors, the interchangeable typeball served almost as an automated transliteration tool: by installing a Cyrillic typeball, they could generate Russian texts while using a standard Roman-letter keyboard.

The original Bibliolore post RILM and the IBM Selectric appeared on 31 July 2021.

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by | March 3, 2026 · 6:00 pm

Behind the scenes: How global abstracts are gathered

The RILM International Center in New York City serves as the organizational hub for the world’s largest music bibliography. One of its strengths is its diverse team of experts, representing various disciplines, languages, and geographic regions. The staff includes music specialists from countries across the globe, many of whom hold doctoral degrees, and are multilingual and are actively involved in a wide range of musical activities.

Bibliographic records are received at the International Center in various formats. Some are entered directly by international committee members into RILM’s custom-built bibliographic database, iBis (Internet Bibliographic Indexing System), or sent in other forms, such as paper, specially tagged digital flat files, or MARC-formatted records downloaded from library catalogs. In some cases, authors can also submit records for their publications via RILM’s online submission forms. RILM also has access to several hundred music journals, either through print copies delivered to the International Center or via online repositories. The journals are reviewed at the office, and relevant materials are accessed into the bibliographic database.

RILM’s editorial staff consists of Assistant Editors and Editors. Assistant Editors are responsible for verifying the accuracy of bibliographic information in records created by RILM committees and submitted by authors. They also enter new records from journals and books sent to the office. Editors focus on bibliographic records that have already been accessed, writing abstracts when necessary, translating abstracts received in other languages, and adding appropriate indexing. Both Assistant Editors and Editors adhere to highly detailed standards, ensuring a thorough verification process for all names, institutions, dates, and concepts included in the records.

RILM staff in 1994.

About one-third of the records are submitted by RILM’s national committees and authors, while two-thirds are produced at the International Center. The largest musicological outputs come from China, the U.S., Germany, and Russia. Chinese and Russian records are especially complex due to the need for bilingual information and varying transliterations of personal and institutional names in non-Roman scripts.

The CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. RILM’s current home.

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by | February 24, 2026 · 6:00 am

RILM’s global network of committees and partnerships

The poster above was once displayed in RILM’s Berlin office of the German national committee, where it explained RILM’s mission as an international musicological bibliography. It highlighted early foundational partners, such as the International Musicological Society, the International Association of Music Libraries, and the American Council of Learned Societies. More importantly, the poster encouraged authors to submit abstracts for their publications. A prominent line on the poster sternly cautioned, “Authors who do not provide their own abstracts accept the risk of having no influence on the formal and substantive design of their abstracts.”

Beyond its nostalgic value as a piece of RILM’s history, the poster also underscores the global network of national, supranational, and regional committees that play a key role in ensuring that significant music-related writings from their respective regions are included in RILM Abstracts of Music Literature and RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text. These committees, made up of musicologists and librarians from major universities, national libraries, and research institutes, are responsible for gathering and processing abstracts. Given that the core principle of the RILM project was to encourage authors, journal editors, and publishers worldwide to submit abstracts, it was essential to have committees in major music literature-producing countries to collect and send these abstracts to the international center for inclusion.

Archives and Research Center for Ethnomusicology (ARCE), New Delhi. Image courtesy of AIIS Archives and Research Center for Ethnomusicology Facebook page.

Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris. Image credit: Thierry Rambaud

Today, RILM has committees in countries across the globe, including Japan, Latvia, France, Guatemala, New Zealand, Türkiye, South Africa, and Taiwan, along with regional committees in Hong Kong and supranational committees, such as the one in Africa. In addition, RILM maintains partnerships with a variety of institutions, including the Archives and Research Center for Ethnomusicology (ARCE) in New Delhi, the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, the National College of Arts in Lahore, and The Journal of the Central Conservatory in Beijing. This extensive network of committees and partnerships plays a crucial role in supporting RILM’s mission to document all forms of music-related publications, from anywhere in the world and in any language.

Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing.

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by | February 13, 2026 · 9:42 am

RILM’s first international collaborators: The committees

The greater RILM organization is a global network comprising national, supranational, and regional committees responsible for ensuring that significant writings on music from their respective countries or regions are included in RILM Abstracts of Music Literature and RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text. These committees, made up of musicologists and librarians affiliated with major universities, national libraries, and research institutes, play a critical role in advancing RILM’s global mission.

From its inception, the core principle of the RILM project was to encourage authors, journal editors, and publishers worldwide to contribute abstracts. RILM’s founder, Barry S. Brook, recognized early on the necessity of having dedicated committees in major music literature-producing countries to gather, process, and forward abstracts to the International Center in New York City. To achieve this, hundreds of letters were sent out to solicit cooperation. Additionally, the project received invaluable advice and support from the International Association of Music Libraries, which helped establish 33 national committees by the time the first issue was published. At that point, however, many of these committees were still small, with some consisting of just a single person.

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by | February 10, 2026 · 6:00 am

RILM submissions: The early days

A 1967 New York Times article titled Who’s writing about music and where reviewed the inaugural quarterly volume of RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, released in August of that year. The reviewer commended the publication as “the first permanent attempt to describe regularly what is being written about in the world’s significant literature on music,” observing that it “obviously fills a great need in musicological circles”. Even in its earliest stages, the potential of RILM Abstracts to help shape the field of music research was already being recognized.

1967 New York Times article.

In his 1967 inaugural report, RILM’s founder, Barry S. Brook, emphasized the integral role of authors and librarians in submitting abstracts, identifying the author-generated abstract as the “essential first step in the RILM project”. Drawing on its successful use in the sciences, Brook advocated for its adoption within the humanities to foster scholarly communication and documentation.

Prior to the introduction of online submission forms, all citations and abstracts were submitted manually–either handwritten or typed–on standardized forms like the yellow one shown above. These forms were available in multiple languages and color-coded for efficient sorting. Given the limitations of manual typewriters, corrections and diacritics had to be added by hand. Once received, submissions were retyped into the database at the International Center, and non-English titles and abstracts were translated into English.

Over the decades, RILM has benefited from the dedication of countless volunteers, including many prominent scholars in musicology and ethnomusicology, whose contributions have helped shape the richness and reach of the database.

Color-coded submission forms.

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by | February 6, 2026 · 6:00 am

RILM and the computer

In July 1965, RILM’s founder, Barry S. Brook, was conducting research in Europe when he attended the International Association of Music Libraries (IAML) congress in Dijon. During the congress, he introduced his ambitious idea of creating an international bibliography of music literature, which he had already named “RILM”. Brook emphasized the transformative potential of using computers for music documentation–an innovative concept at the time. According to Brook, even note-taking would become unnecessary as “any page passing . . . on the screen can immediately be reproduced in paper form or be recalled at will later. We may even dare dream of that famous little black box in which the entire contents of the Library of Congress or of the Bibliothèque Nationale, or both, are stored in speedily recallable form.” Brook envisioned a system where scholars engaged in specific research projects could request bibliographic searches from a computer database and receive automatically generated printouts in response. This forward-thinking approach laid the groundwork for what would become a foundational resource in music scholarship worldwide.

Barry S. Brook in Europe, mid-1960s.

Recognizing that RILM was too small an organization to carry out its ambitious goals alone, Brook reached an agreement with Lockheed Research Laboratory in Palo Alto–a division of Lockheed Missiles and Space Company–to assist in data distribution. Through this partnership, RILM’s bibliographic data could be transmitted via telephone lines, a remarkable innovation given that this took place more than 30 years before internet technology became commercially available.

IBM mainframe computer, 1964. Photo courtesy of IBM.

RILM employees at their computers in 1992.

Following the founding of RILM Abstracts, it quickly became evident that its production depended heavily on computing technology. However, the computing capabilities of the 1960s and 1970s were not fully equipped to handle the complexities of RILM’s multilingual and multicultural mission. Even the powerful IBM System/370 mainframe (pictured in the first image above)–used in RILM’s production from 1970 to 1988–had significant limitations in rendering diverse fonts, writing systems, and diacritical marks. Yet from its inception in 1967, RILM was committed to representing names and terms in their most accurate and original forms, including their native scripts. To meet this standard, RILM editors often relied on a much simpler tool: the IBM Selectric typewriter, which allowed for manual switching between typeballs to produce various fonts and writing systems that the mainframe could not yet support.

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by | February 3, 2026 · 6:00 am

How RILM began

The idea for RILM, as its founder Barry S. Brook later reflected, originated in 1964 from the belief that “the alternative to automation was inundation”. The idea was first publicly presented at the American Musicological Society’s meeting on 10 April 1965. During this presentation, a broad yet clear proposal was introduced, suggesting the creation of an abstract journal that would catalog “significant musicological literature published worldwide”, envisioned as a collaborative effort across multiple countries and universities, supporting graduate-level musicology research. The abstracts would be stored in a computer, indexed, published, and made accessible for retrieval in various ways as needed.

RILM’s founder Barry S. Brook.

A few months later, Brook unveiled a more comprehensive proposal at the Dijon congress of the International Association of Music Libraries. Years afterward, he expressed surprise at the proposal’s remarkably optimistic forecasts. Among its key points, the proposal envisioned RILM producing two main publication series–one focused on current literature and the other dedicated to retrospective material. It outlined a plan to release abstracts and indexes quarterly, with the long-term goal of compiling volumes of retroactive bibliographic records. It also anticipated the use of computer-based automatic indexing, enabling extensive cross-referencing and efficient information retrieval. It described a system in which cumulative indexes would be automatically generated, printed, and published on a regular basis. Additionally, it proposed that researchers could request computer-assisted bibliographic searches and receive printed results tailored to their inquiries. Finally, the proposal suggested that RILM would become financially self-sustaining through publication revenues and fees charged to institutions and individuals seeking specialized information services.

Brook playing an organ.

Brook later acknowledged that the 1965 proposal had been a product of wishful thinking–an idealistic vision of what might be possible. He admitted it was strikingly naïve in terms of the practical means by which RILM and its associated initiatives could be realized. Yet, in hindsight, he also recognized its uncanny prescience: nearly every element outlined in the proposal had, over time, become a reality within the history of RILM.

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