RILM as a starting point for research

Authors

  • Barbara Dobbs Mackenzie Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.9771/ictus.v9i2.34330

Keywords:

RILM, database, bibliography, research resources

Abstract

Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale, more commonly known as RILM, is 43 years old. In these four decades the project has abstracted and indexed the literature on music from around the world, compiling a database that is now well over half a million bibliographic records. The increasing relevance of the database for music researchers is clear: Use of RILM is at an all-time high. It seems an auspicious moment to reflect upon the past, the present, and the future of RILM and its role in music research, especially in the context of the growing profusion of online information and today’s online research environment. [Originally presented as a lecture during the 18th edition of the ANPPOM annual congress, in Salvador (Bahia - Brazil) - September 2008]

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Author Biography

Barbara Dobbs Mackenzie, Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM)

Barbara Dobbs Mackenzie received her Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Michigan, where she wrote on the dissemination of Italian comic opera in the 1740s. She has written and published on the Baglioni family of 18th-century opera singers and on comic opera in Naples and in Rome. Before coming to RILM as an editor, Mackenzie taught music history at Western Michigan University and the University of Michigan. Appointed Editor-in-Chief in 1996, Mackenzie has expanded the operations of RILM and improved the coverage and currency of the database. She has given many presentations at international conferences and organizations, focusing on the issues of bibliographic dissemination and the evolving role of RILM within the research community. She is also the author of a number of articles on bibliographic challenges in music scholarship and the directions RILM has taken to address them. Mackenzie was appointed director of the Barry S. Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation in 1998. The Brook Center, begun by Barry Brook and renamed in his honor upon his death in 1997, is a scholarly facility at the CUNY Graduate Center whose objectives are to promote and provide a setting for wide-ranging research and documentation activities in music. In addition to housing RILM, the Brook Center encompasses the Research Center for Music Iconography, Music in Gotham, the Foundation for Iberian Music, the Center for the Study of Free-Reed Instruments, the 18th-Century Symphony Archive, and the French Opera in Facsimile project. A non-teaching faculty member of the Ph.D. Program in Music at the CUNY Graduate Center, Mackenzie serves on its Executive Committee. She is active in the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres, the Music Library Association, the American Musicological Society, and NFAIS, and she serves on the Board of Directors of NFAIS and Tannery Pond Concerts, a concert organization under the artistic leadership of Christian Steiner in New Lebanon, New York. Mackenzie, who also studied voice at the University of Michigan with Martha Sheil and in New York with Stephen Sweetland, has given a number of recitals and appeared in concert singing music from the Renaissance to Lieder, from opera to Cole Porter.

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Published

2009-02-07

Issue

Vol. 9 No. 2 (2008)

Section

Guest Authors

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