RILM: realigned, renamed, expanded!

Mills Music Library has subscribed to RILM Abstracts of Music Literature for years–long enough that we just call it RILM. RILM is a French acronym: Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale. RILM is an organization, a global network of national committees in 48 countries responsible for ensuring that all significant writings on music published in their respective countries or regions are represented in RILM Abstracts of Music Literature. These committees are composed of musicologists and librarians based at major universities, national libraries, and research institutes. RILM’s International Center is housed at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City.

Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale’s two main bibliographic products, RILM Abstracts of Music Literature and RILM Retrospective Abstracts of Music Literature, were recently realigned and renamed on the EBSCO platform. Here is where things get confusing. RILM Abstracts of Music Literature changed its name to RILM Abstracts of Music Literature (1967-Present only). At the same time, the content of what was called RILM Abstracts of Music Literature was merged with RILM Retrospective Abstracts of Music Literature into a single, comprehensive database. The new product’s name? RILM Abstracts of Music Literature! Alles klar? What this means is patrons will be able to search all RILM Abstracts content and utilize RILM’s four authority databases (Names, Subjects, Instrument Families, and Countries), which was previously unavailable when accessing both databases in a multi-database search environment.

RILM offers an extensive collection of abstracts and bibliographic records focused on music and music related subjects, providing international coverage of relevant articles from 10,000+ journals, many of which are not specifically devoted to music. It also provides indexing and abstracts to conference proceedings, Festschriften, essays, media, and other types of resources. Content dates from late 18th century to the present. As of 2015, RILM includes more than 850,000 records with over 52,000 new records added every year.

RILM: the name remains the same, but the content has expanded!