The RILM database can be searched via the EBSCOHost platform and the ProQuest platform, as has been the case for some years. RILM is also available on one discovery service: the EBSCO Discovery Service. RILM has not provided any metadata of any kind to any other discovery service (including Summon, ExLibris, and WorldCat Local). Any indication to the contrary is inaccurate.
RILM is the world’s most comprehensive database of music literature. All types of publications on music, in all media, are included: books, journals, online resources, research-based sound recordings and films, dissertations, and more (see a complete list of document types). Publications represented in RILM originate from 122 countries, from Albania to Zimbabwe, and are compiled through a collaborative effort between theInternational Center and some 50 committees across the globe. Almost 700,000 records in 131 languages include title translations into English and abstracts in English; the latter are now supplemented with abstracts in the language of publication. All non-roman writing systems such as Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and Hebrew are also represented. Currently RILM grows at a rate of 30,000 records each year.
RILM has dedicated significant resources to the coverage of ethnomusicology, popular music, jazz studies, and retrospective publications over the past two decades. Coverage begins with publications from 1967 and continues through the present. Retrospective projects fill in selected publication types from earlier years, most notably conference proceedings back to 1835. 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.
RILM records are linked more and more with full-text resources, and this linking is expected to increase significantly.
The breadth and depth of coverage is available only through the RILM database. Researchers and students with no access to RILM will miss a large percentage of content in almost any area. And they will not have the advantages of the precision RILM offers them in refining their search.
Contact: Barbara Dobbs Mackenzie, Editor-in-Chief, RILM