RILMAuthor(s): Adam O'ConnorSource: Fontes Artis Musicae, Vol. 40, No. 2 (April-June 1993), pp. 153-156Published by: International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres(IAML)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23508283 .

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REPORTS

Eva-Brit Fanger, the Danish volumes, and

Veslemöy Heintz and Anders Lönn, the

Swedish volumes.

RIPM is now one step closer to the cre

ation of a national Spanish Group. Professor

Jacinto Torres of the Madrid Conservatory

recently spent two weeks (February 1992)

at the Maryland Center learning the RIPM

system. Thereafter, in April 1992 during

the Congress of the International Musico

logical Society, RIPM's General Editor, Marcello Conati—Associate Editor for Ital

ian-Language Publications—and Professor

Torres attended additional meetings in

Madrid with representatives of possible sponsoring institutions. Professor Torres

believes that inputting data will begin in

Spain before January 1993.

Over the past two years we have sought

to create national groups in Eastern Euro

pean countries and have discussed the pos

sibility of doing so with Polish, Hungarian and Czechoslovakian librarians and scholars.

Meetings with representatives from each of

these countries continued in Frankfurt the

past week, with encouraging new develop

ments. After the Frankfurt conference Dr.

Jânos Kârpâti accepted an invitation to the

Maryland RIPM Center where, at the begin

ning of 1993, he will spend two weeks learn

ing the RIPM system. Thereafter, Dr. Kâr

pâti will undertake RIPM activities in

Hungary. Discussions were also held during

the Frankfurt meeting with colleagues from

Romania and Russia, with each expressing

the desire to contribute to RIPM, and with

each now knowing exactly what must be

done to do so. The Prorector of the S.

Taneev Scientific Musical Library in Mos

cow, A. Sokolov, recently communicated his

institution's willingness to actively partici pate in RIPM and to serve as headquarters

for a national RIPM group in Russia. Those of us involved with the administration of RIPM are committed to making every effort

possible to assure that RIPM profits from the active participation of Eastern European

colleagues.

Finally, staff funding for RIPM Germany has been assured for another two years by

153

the Deutsche Forschungs-Gemeinschaft.

Funding continues to be forthcoming from

the Emilia-Romagna regional government and the City of Parma for RIPM's Italian

center, and, from the University of Mary land and the National Endowment for the

Humanities for RIPM's editorial headquar ters in the United States. We have also

received encouraging signs from the Dutch

Musicological Society concerning RIPM

funding in The Netherlands.

H. Robert Cohen, General Editor

RILM

Prague, 1991 (Report no. 25)

Barry S. Brook (President, Commission

Mixte) reported on committee performance,

noting the leading participation of the U.S., German, Austrian, French, and U.K. com

mittees, and the especially enthusiastic co

operation of the Czech, Polish, and Soviet

committees. He pointed out that certain

areas, such as South Slav and Spanish-lan

guage coverage had benefited considerably

from the editorial efforts of Antoni Pizà and

Zdravko Blazekovic of the International

Center. He noted with regret the reduced

participation of the Israeli and Swedish com

mittees. At the end of the meeting, repre sentatives of Finland, Japan, and Sweden

volunteered that they expected improve

ments in participation for the next issue.

Dr. Brook submitted an accelerated two

volume per year production schedule, de

signed to bring RILM Abstracts to currency

by 1994. He noted the introduction of the

compact disc, or CD, version of RILM Ab

stracts, known as MUSE, and solicited any

comments from MUSE subscribers and

questions from others. He also solicited

comments from committee members or

readers on the possibility of eventually issu

ing RILM Abstracts in a single volume com

bining the abstracts and index.

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154 FONTES ARTIS MUSICAE 40/2

Carl Skoggard (Editor) reported on sending abstracted items a year late. Mr.

procedures observed over fifteen years of O'Connor replied that it was difficult to

editing RILM Abstracts. He described, with choose between these two, timeliness and distributed examples, some representative completeness being desirable and some

style, translation, and research problems. times incompatible. He suggested as a com

He urged that an ounce of prevention was promise that the committees send materials

worth a pound of cure, and that if national sufficient to keep the International Center

committees heeded certain points, this fully occupied, thus "buying time" to do would—without proving much of a burden to more work on the balance. Personally, in an

them—greatly speed the production of the emergency, he would prefer that the mate

volumes, insure inclusion and correctness of rials go in on time, even without abstracts,

submitted items, and reduce the number of He urged that committees send materials

queries sent to committees. promptly in small batches, so that the Inter

Adam O'Connor (Senior Editor) relayed national Center would (1) have no lull in

to the national committees the gratitude of materials received and (2) be able to give the editorial staff of the International Center time to the inevitably voluminous late-com

and of subscribers. He noted the loyal par- ing materials.

ticipation of several committees working Dr. Böker-Heil added that he had often with limited resources and hoped that every received replies to queries late from the

committee could eventually send even more International Center. Mr. O'Connor said

material, despite the increased load this that he was unaware of this, and that, in the

would mean for New York. He added a wish future, quick answers could be expected that the list of committees would expand from Heather Piatt and himself,

soon. He noted efforts from New York to Lenore Coral (United States) reiterated

encourage committees and said that these her past objections to the index's preoccu would be expanded. He asked committee pation with first names. She said that this

members to reflect on any connections they was not an example of standard biblio

had in Asian, African, or Latin American graphic practice. Especially with authors nations with an eye to addressing under rep- known only by their initials, she could not

resentation, an acute problem outside the appreciate the desirability of entering them

European-North American sphere. with full first names. Mr. Skoggard replied An extended question-and-answer ses- that he thought that the index had been

sion followed. Thomas Leibnitz (Austria) relaxing its first-name demands for authors

noted the stringency imposed by the accel- —as opposed to subjects—with initials for

erated schedule. He added that he found the first names.

separate abstracts and index books easy to Anders Lönn (Sweden) objected to

use in tandem, as it was his habit to keep NISC's contractual requirement that a CD

both open at once, something that would be be returned upon the cancellation or lapse of

impossible with a single bound book. Mr. a MUSE subscription. He noted that Music O'Connor noted that this had not been con- Index had no such requirements, and that he

sidered by the International Center, but had raised this objection to Terence Ford

wondered if it might be a "RILM insider's" some time earlier. Mr. O'Connor noted that view, since in libraries most volumes are RILM had entered into a five-year contract

bound together. with NISC, and was thus legally bound to Norbert Böker-Heil (Germany) agreed whatever provisions were in it. He felt that

that he found the accelerated production NISC's knowledge of the field and its wish to schedule a challenge. He added that the protect its perceived interests should be

new, unified German committee was work- considered and that, practically, if NISC

ing well, even with strained resources. He were persuaded that it had burdened MUSE

described the alternatives: sending unab- with an uncompetitive feature such as the

stracted items by the committee deadline or return requirement, that it would be re

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REPORTS

moved. Others remarked that CDs were

treated as leased items and that returning them at the close of the lease agreement

was standard.

The observation was made that certain

cut-and-paste changes were routinely made

to RILM Abstracts after it was typeset; this

raising the question of whether the fact that

MUSE was a translation of RILM Abstracts'

typesetting tape meant that there were un

corrected errors on MUSE. Mr. O'Connor

explained that most of the cut-and-paste

changes made to the book were either of a

cosmetic nature that did not affect electronic

delivery, or the addition of exotic diacritics that were likewise not available on the DIA

LOG file or on MUSE. He went on to say

that all the data on the CD was subject to

continual correction in a way that no printed

book was, and that in some aspects the data

for past years on MUSE (data reviewed

before the first MUSE release) was actually

more accurate than in the printed volumes.

He noted that practical limits, such as the

need to input new material as quickly as

possible, imposed a limit on the amount of

correction that could be undertaken, but that

the potential for correcting data was great.

Adam O'Connor, Editor-in-Chief

Frankfurt, 1992 (Report no. 26)

Barry S. Brook (President, Commission

Mixte) spoke on RILM at 25. At a quarter

century, RILM is flourishing. Two annual

volumes have been issued in just over a

year. Volume 21 was prepared in seven

months and was the largest annual volume to

date, with nearly 10,000 entries. Volume 22

was recently completed, and immediately

broke that record by another 2000 entries,

for a total just short of 12,000. The staff in New York is now quite large, and rather

distinguished, with eight PhDs and with na tive speakers of six languages other than

English from six continents.

Most of the national committees are

sending in tremendous amounts of material.

While we regret the absence of materials

155

from several countries, notably Spain, Swe

den, Ireland, and Israel, we are working hard to help to revive their committees, and

are open to suggestions. Beyond this, Drs.

Piatt and Avorgbedor of the International

Center are working quickly to found new

committees in the former Soviet Republics, South America, and Africa.

Last year, the bookkeeping and subscrip tion activities in New York were computer

ized. This year, a new editorial computer system is being designed for the creation of

the book. This will be a unified system, requiring only one keying of material from

accession to typesetting. When it is com

pleted, the new system will represent the

fulfillment of long-standing hopes, and the

realization of ideas first conceived at RILM's

founding. This represents a considerable

amount of work and a fair commitment of

resources. The new system will employ the

latest database management, networking, and page-making facilities. The progress it

represents can hardly be appreciated unless

one has worked under the yoke of the old

technology. The first volume produced on it

will doubtless be a trial, but thereafter, the

editorial and production processes will be

both greatly simplified, speeded, and en hanced. It may even lead to "computeriza

tion" of national committees a year or two

down the road, something that, for the En glish-language abstracts and for the biblio

graphic portion of all records, would mean a

single keying of material from committee to

bound book.

The Rules of Procedure, passed by the

IAML Council at this conference, called for a

renewal of the RILM Commission Mixte.

Five members have been named by IAML:

Barry S. Brook, Melva Peterson, Lenore

Coral, Richard Andrewes, and Norbert

Böker-Heil. Three departing members are Harald Heckmann, Jânos Kârpâti, and Israel

Adler. The ICTM has been invited to join as a sponsor; they have nominated Ann

Schuursma and Joseph Hickerson to serve

on the Commission Mixte.

Adam O'Connor (Editor-in-Chief) re

ported that RILM Abstracts is larger than

ever, coming out quicker than ever, with

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156 FONTES ARTIS MUSICAE 40/2

coverage more varied than ever. He re

sponded to a question about the material for

the next cumulative index being spread over

the two systems, saying that from the plan

ning stage there were three parts in the

design of the new system: (1) Input and

manipulation of the data—how the abstract

would look on the screen and how the data

would make the book; (2) Output—how to

get the same pages as before; and (3) Trans

lation between the new and old data formats

for the purposes of making the Cumulative

Index 5. Necessarily, the translation must

wait until the target format is final. Late materials are entered as soon as

possible. If something simply comes late, it

goes in whatever volume is in progress.

That is not the best conceivable alternative,

because one would like to open the 1990

volume and have everything in it read 1990.

But it is the best possible alternative, be

cause the only other choice is to leave out

late material. A look in the last volume will

reveal material from several different years.

On electronic formats like DIALOG and MUSE, this problem is less serious. The year of publication of the source document is

much more prominent here than the year of

RILM publication. Ten years from now ev

erything will appear to be in order on the

electronic media, while the paper volume

will never be perfectly right. For countries that have not sent material,

we have undertaken an ad hoc lacunae

project. That is one reason the volumes

have become so large. We have taken, in

general, a more active role in searching out

material. When an author in a collection

sends in an abstract of his work, we rou

tinely request the material for the rest of the

collection. For instance, even without a

working Irish committee, in vol. 22 we have

35 entries from a huge symposium published in Dublin because one participant sent in his

abstract.

Subscriptions have increased, not only with new subscribers, but in the regaining of

lapsed ones. Achieving currency will help

RILM both with subscribers and with cover

age. Catching up is the most important

thing, and we really do hope to meet the

declared deadlines. RILM is clearly entering terra incognita with the new system, and we

may experience some unfortunate surprises,

but we couldn't wait any longer. For the past

two volumes, the old system simply did not

work; we could not get our data out of the

computer. And that is no way to publish

things quickly. That's the way to go out of

business. After volume 23 we expect things to be better than before.

Paul Petersen who is writing our com

puter program has been the database man

ager of Engineering Information, an engi

neering abstract publisher, and the editor of

Religion Index, a publisher of theological ab stracts. He is very familiar with abstract

publishing and with music, having been a

professional organist for many years.

Continuing a topic introduced the preced

ing year, the session participants discussed

whether the index should be issued together with the abstract volume. Norbert Böker

Heil, the chair of the German committee,

advocated keeping the separate bindings. Lenore Coral, the chair of the United States

committee, noted that this might be a prob lem if the number of entries continued to

increase, but that she thought stasis would

soon be achieved in musicological publishing.

Barry Brook felt publishing in the field was

likely to continue to expand. He added that

the trend toward CD-ROM storage of infor

mation meant that there might eventually be

no worries about space. A poll of the meet

ing disclosed about a five-to-one ratio of li braries that bound the abstract and index

book together. In a discussion about the

printed, on-line, and CD-ROM formats of RILM, Mr. O'Connor said that there were

no plans to discontinue the printed book.

Mr. O'Connor reiterated the Interna

tional Center's gratitude for the hard work of

the national committees.

Adam O'Connor, Editor-in-Chief

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