Our libraries have found the holy grail of converting an image into a score that can be listened to, but extending that process to large collections of works still poses many practical problems. At the same time, the MusicXML code seems to be offering a radically new way of supplementing MARC21 coding in XML. Having simultaneous access to standardised cataloguing in MARCXML and to its specific musical content, in MusicXML, takes the possibilities for searches, standardisation and research to hitherto unexplored levels.
A number of projects, including The Danish Centre for Music Publication (DCM) (Axel Teich Geertinger, “Turning music catalogues into archives of musical scores – or viceversa: music archives and catalogues based on MEI XML”, Fontes Artis Musicae, 61/1, January-March, 2014, pp. 61-66), have chosen to adopt another specific coding model, the Music Encoding Initiative (MEI)( http://music-encoding.org). Although this kind of file codified in XML can handle the musical content of neumatic and mensural notation without the slightest problem, it seems to be less accurate for complex musical notation. At the moment libraries have to choose between accurate conversion of bibliographical metadata using MEI (with less accuracy in musical coding in XML) and MusicXML’s absolute accuracy in codifying musical notation (with less developed tagging for the section containing bibliographical information from MARC21).
The Library will of course remain alert to any progress towards being able to convert digital libraries into user-friendly libraries for the music information retrieval (MIR) communities.
Library of the Fundación Juan March. 2016 (biblioteca@march.es)