Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (International Repertory of Music Literature; Internationales Repertorium der Musikliteratur), commonly known by its acronym RILM, is a nonprofit organization that offers digital collections and advanced tools for locating research on all topics related to music. Its mission is "to make this knowledge accessible to research and performance communities worldwide….to include the music scholarship of all countries, in all languages, and across all disciplinary and cultural boundaries, thereby fostering research in the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences." Central to RILM's work and mission is the international bibliography of scholarship relating to all facets of music research.

History

RILM was founded in 1966 by the American musicologist Barry S. Brook (1918–1997) under the joint sponsorship of the International Musicological Society (IMS) and the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres (IAML).Barry S. Brook, "RILM, Inaugural Report, January 1967," Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association 23, no. 3 (March 1967): 462–467. In 2007 the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM) joined as a third sponsoring organization.Since RILM’s foundation, the editors-in-chief have written summaries of yearly activities, which offer a concise overview of the history and development of the organization.

During 1967 and 1968, RILM developed its first set of computer programs for the automated processing and sorting of bibliographic records and author/subject indexes. They ran first on the mainframe IBM computer IBM System/360 at the computing center of The City University of New York. The S/360 was delivered by IBM in 1964 and it was at that time the most advanced computing machine. The original IBM S/360 software was later migrated to IBM System/370 and used in the production of RILM Abstracts for twenty years, from 1969 to 1988.The program was developed in Fortran and BAL by Solomon D. Gongola, James E. Korenthal, and Jonathan L. Marz, under the supervision of Laurence H. Heimrath. Its documentation was later worked out by Philip J. Drummond and published as Reference Manual for the RILM Automated Bibliographic System, including a User Guide, Reference Information and Program Listings (New York: Répertoire International de Littérature International, 1976), 4 vols. RILM's development of procedures for computerized data processing was immediately adopted by Répertoire International de Littérature d’Art (RILA), founded upon RILM's model, which started publishing abstracts in 1975.

In 1979 RILM entered an agreement with Lockheed Research Laboratory in Palo Alto, a division of Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, Inc., for the distribution of its data through the telephone lines. Later on, this agreement was transferred to DIALOG Information Retrieval Services. Although available online already before the advent of the Internet, until the end of the twentieth century the primary medium for distribution for its bibliographic records were printed volumes.RILM Abstracts of Music Literature appeared from 1967 to 1983 in triannual printed volumes with indexes corresponding to annual volumes as well as cumulative indexes corresponding to five-year periods; from 1984 to 1999 in annual volumes with corresponding indexes; and since 2000 it is distributed exclusively online.

From 1993 onward RILM was no longer available on DIALOG Information Retrieval Service, but in 1989 the National Information Service Corporation (NISC) in Baltimore released RILM Abstracts of Music Literature on CD-ROM. During the 1990s RILM Abstracts became available online through NISC Muse (1993–2010), OCLC First Search (1994–2010), Ovid/SilverPlatter (2002–2010), and Cambridge Scientific Abstracts/ProQuest (2002–2010) platforms. RILM databases are available through EBSCO Information Services; RILM's platform, Egret, offers RILM Music Encyclopedias and MGG Online.

RILM's first editorial office was located at the Queens College, City University of New York (1967–68). The Graduate Center, CUNY has provided an institutional context for RILM's International Center since 1968.

Organization

RILM has a staff of over 40 employees: editors, technology experts, and administrators. It is governed and guided by a board of directors and an advisory committee, the Commission Mixte International, which consists of appointed members of the International Musicological Society (IMS), the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres (IAML), and the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM). Barry Brook's second report, published in the March 1968 issue of Notes, details the deliberations of the Commission Mixte as it worked to establish the procedures and functioning of RILM.Barry S. Brook, "Report No. 2: September 1967," Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association 24, no. 3 (1968): 457–466.

Online publications

RILM Abstracts of Music Literature

RILM Abstracts of Music Literature covers significant international scholarship in both printed and digital media, and in any language.Raymond Ericson, "Who’s Writing about Music and Where," The New York Times, 5 November 1967.Alan Green, "Keeping up with the Times: Evaluating Currency of Indexing, Language Coverage and Subject Area Coverage in the Three Music Periodical Index Databases," Music Reference Services Quarterly 8, no. 1 (January 2001): 66. Published since August 1967, it consists of citations of articles, single-author books and collections of essays,Jane Gottlieb, Music Library and Research Skills, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 47. bibliographies, catalogues, master's theses and doctoral dissertations,For a detailed survey of dissertations covered in RILM Abstracts, see Jane Gottlieb, Music Library and Research Skills, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 49–50.Kristin Dougan, "Dissertations in the Electronic Age: Tapping into Emerging Musicology Research," Music Reference Services Quarterly 14, no. 3 (July 2011): 109–130. Festschriften, films, videos, technical drawings of instruments, facsimile editions, iconographies, commentaries included with critical editions of music, ethnographic recordings, conference proceedings, reviews, web resources as well as over 3500 periodicals that dovetail with the coverage of Répertoire International de la Presse Musicale.On RILM Abstracts's journal coverage, see Leslie Anne Troutman, "Comprehensiveness of Indexing in Three Music Periodical Databases." Music Reference Services Quarterly 8, no. 1 (January 2001): 39–51; and Alan Green, "The RILM Project: Charting the Seas of Modern Musicological Literature," College Music Symposium 40 (January 2000): 51. It differs from other music periodical indexes through its coverage of books, abstracts, indexing, and broad international yet selective coverage.Jane Gottlieb, Music Library and Research Skills, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 157. Each entry provides the title in the original language, an English translation of the title, full bibliographic data, and an abstract with a detailed index, all of which help to convey the "aboutness" of the record (amplified online by the relevance-based order of display in the individual record.Martin D. Jenkins, "A Descriptive Study of Subject Indexing and Abstracting in International Index to Music Periodicals, RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, and The Music Index Online," Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association 57, no. 4 (June 2001): 859. Many of the non-English entries also include an abstract in the language of the publication.

Following the UNESCO model, RILM Abstracts was conceived as a cooperative of national committees responsible for contributing bibliographic citations and abstracts for the publications issued in their respective countries to the International Office in New York. Today committees contribute about 15,000 records annually, which are edited, indexed, and added to the online database. Another 35,000 records per year are produced by editors at the International Office. Bibliographic information and abstracts—as well as journals that have not yet been covered by RILM—can also be submitted directly to the International Center in New York.

RILM Abstracts of Music Literature was the first abstracted bibliography in the humanities and designated by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) as the pilot project for the development of a computerized, bibliographical system in the humanities to serve as a model for the more than 30 constituent scholarly societies of the ACLS.Barry S. Brook, "Music Literature and Modern Communication: Revolutionary Potentials of the ACLS/CUNY/RILM Project." College Music Symposium. 40 (January 2000): 31–41. A reprint of the visionary article of 1969. At the time when RILM Abstracts was published only in print, its subject thesaurus and name equivalencies, which led users to the preferred terms, were translated into seventeen languages and alphabetically integrated with the subject index.The languages were Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovene, Spanish, and Swedish. Published as RILM Abstracts of Music Literature: International Thesaurus, ed. by Marilyn Bliss (New York: Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale, 1990). The integral thesaurus was also published in the Russian language: Jerzy Gołos, Russian Guide to the RILM International Thesaurus and Cumulative Index/ (New York: Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale, 1976). This practice allowed users to find the desired English-language term or the spelling of a personal name by initiating the search from the language most familiar to them. Gradually RILM Abstracts expanded its multilingual environment and the database now includes, besides standard English-language abstracts, also abstracts in the language of publication and in other languages whenever available. In the mid-2000s RILM Abstracts began to expand its coverage of Asian publications, with music scholarship published in Chinese periodicals.Michelle Hahn, "As Advertised: A Preliminary Look at Compiling and Comparing Title Lists from Music Article Indexes." Music Reference Services Quarterly 11, no. 1 (January 2008): 36. Concurrently, all elements of bibliographic records for publications issued in non-roman writing systems were offered bilingual.

RILM Abstracts of Music Literature appeared from 1967 to 1983 in triannual printed volumes with indexes corresponding to annual volumes as well as cumulative indexes corresponding to five-year periods; from 1984 to 1999 in annual volumes with corresponding indexes; and since 2000 it is available exclusively online through EBSCOhost.

RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text

In July 2016 RILM Abstracts of Music Literature expanded with the addition of music periodicals in full-text. RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text (RAFT) offers access to 250 music periodicals from many countries. Coverage also includes reviews as well as obituaries, editorials, correspondence, advertisements, and news, published from the early twentieth century to the present. In addition to metadata, abstracts, and indexing, RAFT offers searching and browsing tools for each full-text issue, cover to cover. The database is updated monthly."EBSCO Information Services released RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text." Online Searcher (September–October 2016): 7. Details of each title's current coverage can be found in the title list at rilm.org/fulltext. New titles are added over time.

RILM Music Encyclopedias