On Mon, 27 Jan 2014 16:42:57 -0500 (EST), theoj89294 wrote
> I am not a musicologist, so please forgive my ignorance.

Don't worry!

> But I am
> confused, sometimes manuscripts are identified by notations such as,
> e.g. "RM 4137 olim Mf 2004" and sometimes as, e.g. "A-Wn MusHS
> 17706" - which makes a lot more sense to me, because I realize this
> gives the country, and library location.

The first one looks like a RISM-Entry. This international institution
tries to catalog sources (and publish printed catalogs).
As you observed the first part denotes the country, the second part
a library (the library sigla are given by the national institution)
and the last part denotes the source itself.
But no all manuscipts are cataloged by RISM and some literature predates
the RISM efforts, so you often find the callmarks of the local library.
Sometimes a source even has more than one local callmark (some libraries
have more than one catalog, or the manuscript got moved) and sometimes
sources move from one library to another (Danzig->Berlin/Berlin->Moscow etc.)

> Are the two methods of
> identifying manuscripts mutually exclusive? Or does each manuscript
> have an identifier of each type? If there a source to translate one
> ID to the other? Thanks for any explanation-

There should be - but if find 
http://opac.rism.info/index.php?id=6&no_cache=1&L=1
pretty much useless (Rant: someone probably wasted a lot of money fot this
crappy, useless piece of software).

Of course, you can just visit your local library and consult the printed
RISM catalog.

 HTH Ralf Mattes



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