There is a long-standing effort to do for musical iconography what RILM and RIMM do for musicology and music manuscripts, respectively: http://web.gc.cuny.edu/rcmi/index.htm
They don't seem to be very web-oriented. Possibly they are concerned about copyright issues in putting their images online (a 400-year-old work of art is in the public domain, but the museum slide or reproduction in a published volume is not.) They tried to develop a cataloguing system for images of musical instruments. Unfortunately they kept revising the rules as they went along and discovered that the [1-page] [10-page] [25-page] rule sets were inadequate. I had some correspondence with them a couple of decades ago, which broke down because they wanted a set of clearly distinguished types of lute. each with its own distinct name. I kept trying to explain that the lute family was not standardized and that you would need to specify, insofar as possible, the number of strings, number of nuts/pegboxes, etc. They would write back and say, "Yes, but we need /one name/ for each type." They didn't get that the lute is polymorphously perverse. I also wrote my master's thesis for the School of Information and Library Science at UNC on the history of their cataloguing rules. Short summary: They shoulda asked a librarian. Caroline -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [LUTE] Re: Lute iconographic project - a proposal Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 14:59:18 +0100 From: G. Crona <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> CC: Susanne Herre <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Good idea Susanne! It would be most convenient to have a site where as much as possible of the iconography could be found. Well catalogisized and in both tumbnails and bigger versions. A sort of mini Wikipedia like, where we could go in and add information if available. I believe Alfonso reads the list, perhaps he has some ideas of how to go about to do this? B.R. G. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Susanne Herre" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, October 28, 2007 4:25 PM Subject: [LUTE] Lute iconographic project - a proposal > Dear all, > > I liked very much the website of Alfonso Marin about the Lute iconography. > Thank you very much for this work! > > Woulnd't it be good if this could get a more official character und could > be enlarged by the help of us all (I guess nearly every body has digital > photographs of lute angels, pictures, instruments in museums a.s.o. which > would be interesting for everyone and which we could send to Alfonso > Marin)? > > Then it would be helpful if the pictures could be organized in groups, > e.g. 1) paintings, several periods of time 2) sculptures 3) instruments in > museums (different types a.s.o.) > > The information could also be added by everyone. > > I think the medium "Internet" is really good to combine information, to > share with many people. It could be a really good basis for research. > > What do you think about this idea? > > > All the best, > > Susanne > -- > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html > --
