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Home > About
Mapping the music resource of the UK and Ireland
What do you want to find out about music?
- Where are individual musicians' manuscripts or papers located?
- Where can I see a collection of historic wind instruments?
- Who holds archives of concert programmes?
- Does my local library lend CDs?
What do you need the information for?
- For my school project
- For my college course
- For a paper I'm writing
- For my personal interest
The archives, libraries and museums of the UK and Ireland are treasure houses of materials and resources covering every aspect of music from the esoteric to the popular. Somewhere, there will be an answer to that particular question - the problem is knowing where to find it.
Cecilia aims to find the answers. The searchable Collection Descriptions on Cecilia's database will enable you to find information about the music that interests you, and help you discover where the best resources are to suit your needs.
Some background information
Music and its performance are vital elements in our cultural heritage and traditions, offer a rich variety of opportunities for learning, research and personal fulfilment, and form a significant component of the UK cultural industries. Information on what is available in our libraries, archives, museums and other specialist institutions - whether unique heritage items, special collections or practical information on the scope of local resources - is an important enabling factor which not only underpins much of this activity but also ensures its continuation.
Cecilia provides a high-level map of the national music resource, defined as the holdings of music materials in libraries, archives and museums across the UK and Ireland. It is intended to provide a directory of first resort for every enquiry about music resources, and is managed by the UK and Ireland Branch of the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres, IAML(UK & Irl). Cecilia takes the form of a web-based, searchable database of collection level descriptions of music holdings held in both specialised and general repositories. Its scope is extremely wide, since potentially, any library, museum or archive contains relevant materials, often dispersed or hidden amongst more general holdings.
The development of Cecilia was made possible with a grant to IAML(UK & Irl) in 2000 from the BL Cooperation and Partnership scheme which included support from the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP) and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA). A copy of the data is held by AHDS Performing Arts to ensure its long-term preservation. Detailed reports on the project are available at http://www.bl.uk/about/cooperation/pdf/report36.pdf
Collection descriptions were created using the RSLP CD schema and form one of the family of datasets under the Cornucopia umbrella. The decision to adopt this approach was taken in 2003 and has many benefits including the ability to cross-search Cecilia alongside Corncucopia, the automatic implementation of any developments to the Cornucopia system and the distributed editing function. Further information on the technical architecture can be found at http://www.cornucopia.org.uk/html/about. Chris Turner of MLA has also written an article about the service for Ariadne issue 40
To date the Cecilia database contains over 1800 collection records, representing collections held in nearly 500 institutions, but this represents the tip of a very large iceberg. For example, we have discovered that the range of music materials held in local authority and university archives, often forming a small part of much larger collections, is much more extensive than was previously thought and we have so far only been able to include records from a sample of each of the three domains. With this in mind, Cecilia provides a means for anyone with a collection of music materials to add to the database, or to amend existing records.
We are currently developing the Cecilia database. Updates on progress will be regularly posted on these pages.