The Database developed by Association RIdIM is designed to facilitate discovery of music, dance, theatre and opera iconography images by registered researchers, and the description of such images by registered cataloguers. The database is web-based and platform independent, and access is free of charge to scholars affiliated with academic institutions, galleries, museums, etc., as well as independent researchers.
Database records contain descriptions and images of visual objects featuring music, dance, theatre and oper-related topics or content. Where images are not included, such as in the cases where copyright issues arise online sources for the artwork image are included. The scope of visual documents and artifacts contained in the database encompasses a wide spectrum of items (architecture, performance art, videos as well as paintings, drawings and sculptures) and represents diverse techniques and media. The content includes depictions of instruments, musicians, performers, music patrons, music notation, performance venues and more.
A powerful and flexible searching interface allows retrieval of works using both free-text keywords and controlled vocabulary terms. Examples of search access points include names of artists and musicians, musical instruments, titles (often in multiple languages), art media, date of creation and owning institutions (museums, archives, etc.).
The database is being designed to take advantage of current technology and support widely used concepts and standards for metadata, including those specially designed for art, music and iconography. Examples include:
- Unicode text encoding.
- Repeatable fields for entering unlimited numbers of artists, titles, instruments, etc.
- Controlled, centrally edited lists of artist and musician names, museum names, art media terms, geographic places and musical instruments, including the Hornbostel-Sachs instrument classification system.
- A rich controlled vocabulary for musical instruments, organized using the Hornbostel-Sachs and MIMO instrument classification systems.
- Free-text fields for entering descriptions, information on related art works, bibliographic references and various types of notes.
- Image upload and links to image URLs.
For cataloguers, a detailed, field-by-field style guide provides examples and guidelines for metadata input standards, ranging from the basic required fields to the many optional de- tailed-level fields. As the database continues to develop and feedback from cataloguers is received, the guide will be updated and revised on an ongoing basis.
Additional support to the cataloguers is available on an ongoing basis via communication with a representative of the Editorial Team, and online tutorials will be available from summer 2015.
If you would like to register as a cataloguer for Association RIdIM, please contact <association[at]ridim.org>.
The development of the RIdIM database was made possible by a generous grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.
