Newsletter of the Specialized Information Service Musicology
No. 2
19/04/2022
Web archiving
The long-term archive of internet resources is growing!
"What is waste to one era is to another precious information." (Aleida Assmann)
Since 2005, approximately 3,000 music-related websites have been cataloged by the musiconn team, of which a total of 301 websites have been long-term archived since web archiving began in 2013. In this way, we not only ensure the musical and musicological cultural heritage in the digital space, but also enable a chronological view of the respective web copies at the same time through semi-annual harvesting of these websites. Consequently, we offer an overview of the virtual source situation.
A list of long-term archived websites can be found in the Webguide Music using the search term "Langzeitarchivierung" or by using the Advanced Search function of musiconn.search with the following instruction:
Do not enter a search term. Instead, select "MusicOPAC at BSB" under Data Sources. Then click on "Search". Select the media type "Internetressource" in the left column "Narrow Results". All long-term archived web pages are now displayed.
A general pool of long-term archived websites can be found in the BSB-OPAC (https://opacplus.bsb-muenchen.de) under the search term "Archiv von:".
Cooperation with Archiv Frau und Musik
Furthermore, musiconn is cooperating with Archiv Frau und Musik (AFM) from Frankfurt, Germany since October 2021. As part of the DDF project "WIMUGG! Women in Music: Heard - Seen!" the archive aims to provide documentation, preservation and presentation of information on concert events in the digital transformation. As a result, a total of 50 websites surrounding the topic of "Woman and Music" will be added to the long-term archive by the end of 2022. While AFM is responsible for the rights' clearances and selection of the websites in accordance to the Bavarian State Library's collection profile, musiconn will add the chosen selected websites to the long-term archive and maintain them in future. The cooperation enables a larger offer of long-term archived websites by the end of the year.
Feel free to contact us if you find web content related to musicology or music in general which should be included into our index of internet resources or long-term archive: https://www.musiconn.de/services/wunschbuch3.
Advisory Board
Report of the Advisory Board Meeting 2022 on March 7-8, 2022
On 7th and 8th March, the annual advisory board meeting of the FID Musicology "musiconn" took place in digital form, with almost all 15advisory board members attending. The focus lied on achievements and upcoming issues - also in preparation for the interim report which will be submitted to the DFG in summer.
Key findings were the following: For the sharpening, more apparent display and utilisation of the work packages, the different needs of the community are to be considered in a more stronger and nuanced manner. Continuously, deeper attention will be paid to the securing of research data as well as to the transfer of existing data from separate "orphaned" data silos into suitable repositories and repositories that are to be further developed.
There was also a lively discussion about optimising individual musiconn offerings: for instance, more English-language and multimedia content should be included into the musiconn.publish repository in future. At the same time, the Dachverband der Studierenden der Musikwissenschaft(umbrella organisation of musicology students) should be given the opportunity to establish its own journal. The creation and publication of the journal will be supervised by a committee of academic mentors. For the digital phonotheque musiconn.audio, which is currently under construction, relevant data sources were addressed, that could among others come from the field of ethnomusicology. An expansion of the scientific blog musiconn.kontrovers in terms of multimedia contributions is already being considered. A proposed display of available digital copies in musiconn.search is still being technically tested.
It was once again emphasised that the performance database musiconn.performance offers good possibilities for storing and publishing event data created in different research contexts for the long term, and that more attention should be paid towards this function. Concerning theweb archiving of internet resources, a better description of the search entry and a simplified access of web archived pages was proposed. A presentation about planned further developments of the Dissertationmeldestelle (dms) (dissertation registration office) was followed by suggestions for the integration of ORCID as well as keywords and other filters for better search results in the dissertation search mask.
This year's advisory board meeting concluded with a look into the future of the Specialised Information Service Musicology. First ideas for a follow-up application were collected. Further networking possibilities with the NFDI and NFDI4Culture in particular were additionally discussed. We thank the advisory board members for the open and stimulating exchange.
musiconn.performance
Figure: Tokyo University of Arts Library Digital Collection | musiconn.performance @ SLUB Dresden
musiconn.performance goes more and more international and includes now data on symphonic concerts in Tokyo
musiconn.performance (https://performance.musiconn.de/) has been enriched by another international data corpus. Already in 2019, after the completion of the"Musica Migrans"project, more than 2,000 linked data sets on concert events in Central and Eastern Europe found their way into the performance database, which makes project results and research data on music events of the past and present available and searchable in the long term. In addition, from 2019 to 2021, 1,116 concerts in various cities of the former Soviet Union and abroad were recorded in musiconn.performance from program booklets of the years 1910 to 2015 in an indexing project of the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media. The sources come from the pre-death estate of musicologist Michail Bialik and are mostly of Soviet Russian provenance. Furthermore, livrets de ballet, libretti, play texts, scenars, sujets de ballet, and festival descriptions served as textual sources for the "Theater Dance Chronicle (TTC) Paris"which is also documented in musiconn.performance. The chronicle contains 534 scenic performances of or with dance that took place in and around Paris in the period of 1650 to 1760. The Emmy Noether Junior Research Group at the Institute of Theater Studies at the University of Leipzig collected the corresponding data between 2014 and 2020 in the project "Ritual Design for the Ballet Stage: Constructions of Popular Culture in European Theater Dance".
In addition, the beginning of March saw more than 1,000 records of 522 musical events at 32 performance venues in the Tokyo metropolitan region from the years 1868 and 1945 included. The data, which was contributed by Clemens Büttner from the Audio Communication Department at the Technical University of Berlin, is based on a compilation of Japanese performance spaces and analysis of program announcements in newspaper articles in the digital archive of the Japan Times. Special consideration was given to concert events of the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, the Tokyo Philharmonic Society and the Meiji Musical Society in the Hibiya Public Hall, the Imperial Theater Tokyo and the concert hall of the Tokyo Academy of Music.
At first glance, enthusiasm for Beethoven in Japan is evident, as performances of his symphonies were given in numerous subscription concerts in Tokyo concert halls. Anniversary and commemorative concerts of the composer and the German-Japanese Cultural Agreement in 1926 are also devoted to his symphonic works.
New features will be available in the Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM) online catalog starting in February 2022.
RISM OPAC is the largest database of its kind in the world, with more than 1.3 million music manuscripts, music prints, libretti, and writings about music on record. The technical provision is carried out within the framework of the Specialised Information Service Musicology at the BSB.
A central feature of the new OPAC version is the integration of the IIIF viewer "Mirador". The integration allows direct access to electronic resources that comply with the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) standard. This technology is used by a growing number of cultural institutions and memory organisations to make their digital collections available. Using the Augsburg music manuscript with the signature D-As Tonk Schl 200a for instance, it is now possible to view the watermarks contained in the catalog entry in addition to the digital copy.
Furthermore, an additional filter can be used to select new or updated titles in the list of results. This allows a quick overview of the current source situation and the development of the data stock. In addition, each entry receives a note at the end indicating the date of the last change.
The item section of the music prints has also been revised: new controls as well as the integration of additional links to RISM standard data and volume entries facilitate the search.
The display of institutions and secondary literature has also been optimised. Much more detailed information is now provided here, including an integrated map for displaying geo-coordinates. An example of this is the entry of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek with the RISM abbreviation "D-Mbs".
Especially interesting for projects: From now on, in the Data section, persons and institutions in RISM can be retrieved via GND and VIAF-BEACON files.
musiconn.performance
Figure: SLUB Dresden / Deutsche Fotothek / Erich Höhne | musiconn.performance @ SLUB Dresden
The contemporary music of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), which has often received little attention in musicological discourse, is becoming more visible in musiconn.performance
Contemporary music from the GDR is difficult to grasp today, is rarely heard, and is only slowly gaining a proper place in the musicological discourse. musiconn.performance aims to contribute to making these works and East German musical life visible by providing data on musical premieres in the GDR or by composers located there. The data are based on two indexes, "Socialist music making of the GDR, premieres 1976-1981" (https://digital.slub-dresden.de/id332247570) and "Contemporary music making in the GDR, premieres 1982-90" (https://digital.slub-dresden.de/id332247929), which were compiled between 1976 and 1990 in the music department of the Saxon State Library at that time in Dresden. Both collections complement the "Archive of Composers of the GDR", which was built up at the library and is constantly being expanded up to this day.
Documented is the intensive cultivation of New Music in numerous municipal symphony orchestras,. Recorded are premieres at numerous festivals with quite different orientations, such as the Berlin Music Biennale, the Dresden Music Festival, but also the Workers' Festival of the GDR; documented are also premieres that took place in radio, film and television.
In a "Corona Home Office Project", 21 SLUB staff members gathered about 20,000 premiered and broadcast works from available annual reports and at the same time created 3,168 work and person norm records in the Gemeinsame Normdatei (GND). The first 2,000 musical events documented in this way are now presented in musiconn.performance. Records for more than 800 venues, over 2,000 performers, and 847 participating orchestras from 1987 to 1990 were part of the data import.
Thanks to this valuable addition, musiconn.performance now contains more than 100,000 records of musical performances in front of a listening audience, as well as their supporting sources from contributing partners in concert halls, memory institutions, and research. Around 7,000 event records will follow as soon as the remaining GDR data has been mapped and imported.
About this newsletter
The newsletter of the Specialised Information Service Musicology informs you about musicological topics, resources, events and much more.