RILM News

RILM will participate at the 69th national conference of the College Music Society in Grand Rapids, Michigan, 12–14 November 2026.

On Thursday, 12 November, 4:30pm EST, in the Ambassador East Ballroom, Assistant Editor and overseer of marketing operations Michael Lupo will give a short presentation at the RILM-sponsored reception Celebrating CMS Scholarship, which showcases recent publications by CMS authors. Michael’s talk will introduce RILM and highlight the value of its products, especially the RILM Index to Scores and Collected Editions, for teachers, students, performers, and researchers.

Michael will also be present at the RILM exhibitor’s booth throughout the conference. Please feel free to come by to ask questions, provide feedback, or just say hello. Details on this event can be found on the conference website.

On Friday, 6 November, RILM Executive Editor Zdravko Blažeković and editors Mu Qian and Stella Zhizhi Li will bring RILM’s resources to Beijing for the Yang Yinliu Lecture Series (No. 154) at the Institute of Music, Chinese National Academy of Arts. Their talk, “Exploring digital resources for music research: Reference works, encyclopedias, and independent music magazines”, traces RILM’s development and demonstrate the reference collections on Egret, including MGG Online, DEUMM Online, RILM Music Encyclopedias, and the RILM Archive of Popular Music Magazines.

The session will be moderated by Chen Yu, Deputy Director of the Institute of Music, and hosted by the editorial department of Chinese musicology.

RILM will attend the 71st annual meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology in Bloomington, Indiana, 5–8 November 2026.

Executive Director Tina Frühauf will speak at the General Membership Meeting on 7 November, at 1:45–3:45pm local time. She is available throughout the conference to talk about all of RILM’s resources and job opportunities. Reach out to her ahead of time at tfruhauf@rilm.org. View the full conference schedule here.

RILM will participate in the 25/26 Incontriamoci in Biblioteca seminar, held in the library of the Conservatorio di Musica “Giovan Battista Martini” in Bologna, Italy, 19–20 October 2026.

RILM’s Executive Editor Zdravko Blažeković will join DEUMM Online General Editor Daniela Castaldo and EBSCO’s Giovanni Chiauzzi to discuss RILM’s history and research resources; the content, functionalities, and development of DEUMM Online; and the role of EBSCO in streamlining the research process. 

Please feel free to find Zdravko, Daniela, and Giovanni to ask questions, provide feedback, or just say hello. For more details, head to the event’s website.

In January 2027, RILM Music Encyclopedias will welcome three new titles into its continuously expanding collection of historical and current reference texts:

• Roberto Leydi and Sandra Mantovani. Dizionario della musica popolare europea (Milano: Bompiani, 1970) 316 p. — In Italian.
• Emmett G. Price III, Tammy L. Kernodle, and Horace J. Maxile Jr., eds. Encyclopedia of African American music, 3 vols. (Oxford: Greenwood, 2010) xlix, 1069 p. — In English.
• Hugo Riemann, ed. Musik-Lexikon (5th edition; Leipzig: Max Hesse’s Verlag, 1900) xxiii, 1284 p. — In German.

The 2027 additions to RILM Music Encyclopedias exemplify RILM’s mission to document, preserve, and provide access to the world’s musical knowledge in all its diversity. Spanning folk and traditional music, African American musical culture, and foundational European music scholarship, these titles expand the collection’s multilingual and international scope while bringing together perspectives from different musical traditions, historical periods, and scholarly approaches. Together, they reinforce RILM Music Encyclopedias’ commitment to comprehensive coverage of music as a global human endeavor.

RILM Music Encyclopedias can be accessed via EBSCOhost and on RILM’s platform, Egret, at rme.rilm.org.

For further information, please email encyclopedias@rilm.org.

RILM will participate at this year’s joint meeting of the German group of the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres (IAML) and the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA), Ländergruppe Deutschland-Schweiz in Mannheim, Germany, 22–25 September 2026.

This event represents IAML’s annual working and training conference for professionals from all areas of the German music library system, alongside archivists invested in the care, access, and long-term preservation of the world’s sound and moving image heritage.

On 24 September, at 1:00pm local time, MGG Online Product Coordinator Georg Burgstaller will give a presentation on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of MGG Online’s launch at the assembly hall (Aula) of the Universität Mannheim.

Please come by to learn about new developments, ask questions, and provide feedback. You can find more details on this event on the conference website, which includes the conference schedule.

RILM will participate in the seventh congress of the Regional Association for Latin America and the Caribbean of the International Musicological Society (ARLAC/IMS), which will take place at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 10–14 August 2026.

On Thursday, 13 August, at 4:00pm local/3:00pm EDT, RILM will host a plenary session, featuring three presentations. Executive Director Tina Frühauf will open the panel by addressing RILM at 60: “From bibliography to cultural memory in the age of AI: Stewardship, infrastructure, and the next platform”. Supervising Editor James Melo will survey RILM’s resources and their significance for Latin America and the Caribbean, and provide a behind-the-scenes look at our editorial processes. Finally, Executive Editor Zdravko Blažeković will highlight the six-decade relationship between RILM and the IMS. The session is chaired by Maria Alice Volpe, who will lead discussions on RILM’s evolving mission, how scholars engage with databases in the age of AI, and what can be learned from RILM’s cooperative model as musicological literature continues to grow. RILM’s Principal Architect, Guillaume Hérrison, will be present as well.

Please feel free to find us to ask questions, provide feedback, or just say hello. You can find more details about this event on the conference website.

In celebration of the 60th anniversary of Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM), we proudly present a short documentary film. Narrated by Executive Director Tina Frühauf and Executive Editor Zdravko Blažeković, and featuring several current and former RILM staff members, it explores RILM’s history, mission, and evolving role in music scholarship and cultural preservation.

As the film recounts RILM’s evolution from an ambitious vision to an international organization that occupies a unique place within the humanities, it explores ideas that have shaped RILM over six decades: a commitment to documenting the world’s musical and scholarly traditions in all their diversity, and an eagerness to embrace technological innovation, from the computer to generative artificial intelligence. Recent developments, including RILM’s recognition as a UNESCO-accredited NGO, also suggest directions for the organization’s future. 

RILM serves a global music research community through an expansive range of bibliographic resources. This film offers a glimpse of the people and ideas that lie behind this endeavor. We hope you enjoy it.

RILM will participate, for the first time, in the world conference of the International Society for Music Education (ISME), which will take place in the Palais des congrès de Montréal, Montréal, Canada, 26–31 July 2026. 

On Monday, 27 July, at 2:50pm local time, Editorial Director Designate Ralph Whyte will lead a workshop entitled “Research techniques workshop: Critical bibliography skills”. Ralph will also give a paper presentation, “Bibliodiversity in higher music education: Exploring the possibilities of multilingual readings”, on Wednesday, 29 July, at 11:50am local time. 

Ralph and Executive Director Tina Frühauf will be in attendance throughout the conference. Please feel free to find us to ask questions, provide feedback, or just say hello. You can find more details about this event on the conference website.

The RILM Archive of Popular Music Magazines (RAPMM) just added 12 publications to its collection. The new titles are:

• La línea del arco. León: Luis Calvo, 1991–92.
• Mojo navigator. San Francisco: Mojo Publishing Company, 1966–67.
• Muchacha fanzine. San Antonio: Daisy Salinas,  2011–.
• Muchacha mini. San Antonio: Daisy Salinas,  2011–.
• New York rocker. New York: Alan Betrock/Andy Schwartz, 1976–84.
• Progression: The quarterly journal of progressive music. Lowell: John Collinge, 1992–2018.
• Rejoice!. Oxford: University of Mississippi, 1987–94.
• SCAM. Fort Lauderdale/Miami/San Francisco/Brooklyn: Iggy Scam, 1991–2016.
• Sea of tranquility. Louisville: Images and Words, Inc., 2000–01.
• 实验先锋 [Shiyan xianfeng/China avant-garde music fanzine]. Xi county: Xi Productions, 2011–15.
• Spiral. Madrid: Revista Spiral, 1993–96. ISSN 1134-0878
• Women in rock. Cincinnati: Izzy Krombholz, 2016–20.

These newly added titles reflect RILM’s international scope and mission of cultural preservation. With publications in Chinese, English, and Spanish, they document progressive rock, punk, avant-garde music and more across three continents, offering a global perspective on popular music scenes and artists of the last 60 years.  

RAPMM now comprises more than 135 independently published popular music magazines and fanzines dating from the late 1960s to the present day. This continually expanding collection of digitized and fully searchable publications serves as a valuable resource for multidisciplinary research into the history of global popular music and its relation to politics and society, underground scenes, stylistic shifts, feminism, iconography, and more.

RILM Archive of Popular Music Magazines is available on RILM’s platform, Egret, at rapmm.rilm.org