The IRCAM multimedia library: a digital music library

The paper describes the transition of the IRCAM Music Library from a traditional setup to one tightly integrating digital technologies: online collections of self-describing multimedia objects, networked access and delivery on LANs and WANs, search tools and interfaces. The goal of this one-year project had been to bring together heterogeneous collections of documents (books, scores, periodicals, commercial and unpublished music recordings, videos...) allowing for their combined use by library patrons on- and off-site, with due consideration for the intellectual property rights of each individual document. The successful integration of these collections has increased public use of the library and influenced scholar writing of musical analyses and the production of musical educational tools. While part of its collections are on paper and will remain so due to technical and legal considerations, other collections are available only in digitized form, with computer search tools and networked delivery.