Musicology of Digital Libraries: structure in RILM

Abstract

Music Digital Libraries are traditionally viewed as holders and providers of contents for computationally assisted study into those materials. In this paper, we instead propose the musicological study of a Digital Library in its own right. We argue that the record and summary of research activity provided by bibliographic catalogues is a valuable resource for those wishing to study the history and development of scholarship - in this case musicology Using a catalogue of musicological literature, the Repertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM), we examine the information available and undertake preliminary investigations illustrating the kinds of insight that can be gained. A Digital Library of RILM's size requires approaches suitable for large-scale data: we apply network analysis methods over RILM's indexing terms to demonstrate the viability of our approach. We offer an initial interpretation of the analysis that accounts for the paradigms of musicological thinking embodied in the Digital Library by the authors of the literature and of the cataloguers, and reflect upon how studies such as ours are influenced by - but can also shed light upon - the shifting trends and biases found within the community structures of musicology.