RILM Abstracts of Music Literature covers all types of publications on music, published anywhere in the world and in any language. The document types covered include all print and digital media.
Publications represented in RILM Abstracts are compiled through a collaborative effort between the International Center RILM’s national committees, and authors who are welcome to submit for indexing the bibliographic information and abstracts concerning their own publications. The over one and a half million records include titles in the original language and English translation, bibliographic information, and abstracts in English and, when available, the language of publication. Records for publications issued in languages using non-roman writing systems (such as Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Korean, and Hebrew) are represented bilingually.
Over the past two decades RILM has dedicated significant additional resources to the coverage of ethnomusicology, popular music, and jazz studies. RILM is also committed to establishing an interdisciplinary context for music studies, and therefore actively tracks publications in a wide range of disciplines that includes anthropology, archaeology, architecture, art history, dance studies, dramatic arts, librarianship, literature, pedagogy, philosophy, physics, psychology, sociology, and therapy. The wide range of music-related topics covered in RILM is reflected in the list of some 2,400 music journals represented in the database in addition to several thousand journals that focus on other disciplines and fields.
The official scope guidelines of RILM Abstracts are available in English, French, and German.
Paralleling breadth in content, RILM Abstracts of Music Literature also offers a full-text enhancement. Both are updated monthly to maximize currency.
RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text
RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text expands upon that unrivaled global bibliography of writings on music with the addition of full-text content from 260+ periodicals, from 45 countries, published since the early 20th century. Coverage of most periodicals commences with the first issue of the journal run.
RILM Abstracts of Music Literature
RILM Abstracts of Music Literature indexes literature on music published since the early 19th century. Conference proceedings are indexed back to 1835, and Festschriften to 1840. The coverage of music periodicals from before 1967 is coordinated with RIPM Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals in order to avoid possible duplication. To learn more about the RILM-RIPM collaboration, see our jointly created flyer.