Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale

Nonprofit organization

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.

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). In 2007 the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM) joined as a third sponsoring 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. 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. 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.

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.