Expansion of the specialized information service for musicology
The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and the Sächsische Landesbibliothek - Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden are launching the second phase of the "Fachinformationsdienst Musikwissenschaft", a three-year project funded by the German Research Foundation with approximately 1.5 million euros. The aim is to provide professional information services for top-level musicological research in Germany.
Over the next three years, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (BSB) and the Sächsische Landesbibliothek - Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden (SLUB) will jointly expand the existing services of the Specialized Information Service for Musicology and add new, innovative services. Together, the two libraries will further develop the International Encyclopedia of Musical Sources (RISM), which in future will include detailed descriptions of printed music as well as music manuscripts. The BSB will also launch the information portal "Virtuelle Fachbibliothek Musikwissenschaft" (www.vifamusik.de), long-term archiving of musicologically relevant websites and dealing with the challenges of Optical Music Recognition. The BSB will also continue to build up a comprehensive collection of conventional and electronic media for musicology. A database for recording performance documents such as concert programs, posters etc. will be created at the SLUB, which will offer new perspectives for the academic study of German and international concerts. The new service also includes a specialist repository in which musicological literature will be made available open access.
An advisory board consisting of 13 people from relevant institutions and associations is responsible for the exchange with the specialist community. In order to make potential users aware of the new FID musicology services, road shows are planned in addition to conference presentations and journal articles, in which the project partners report on the FID services in musicological institutes.
The "Specialized Information Services for Science" funding programme launched by the German Research Foundation in 2013 has replaced the system of special subject collections. From 1949 to 2013, the Bavarian State Library was responsible for the special subject collection for musicology and received financial support from the DFG for the acquisition of printed music and music literature. Since 2005, SSG funding has been supplemented by funding for the development of the Virtual Library of Musicology (www.vifamusik.de), a central information portal for musicology with extensive access to quality-checked specialist information.
