IMSLP Forums

The Dutch Radio Music Library (Omroep) has 5000 scores in many categories, of which Classical, choral and arrangements (Salon orchestra) are particularly relevant to IMSLP. So far IMSLP has received only 250 Omroep scores.

Unfortunately the Omroep library is to be closed on 1st August,and its holdings moved at some time in the future to a new national music library in the Hague.

That is the gist of this expalnation :
De Muziekbibliotheek van de Omroep houdt per 1 augustus 2013 op te bestaan. Plannen om grote delen van de collecties onder te brengen in een Nationale Muziekbibliotheek worden onderzocht.
Voorlopig blijft Muziekschatten, waarvan de OmroepmuziekWiki deel uitmaakt, toegankelijk. Zodra meer duidelijk is over de huisvesting van de bibliotheekcollecties en de voortgang van Muziekschatten wordt dit op de website bekend gemaakt.

It doesn't seem clear whether the existing web site will close. Certainly it will not be added to.

Could we make an effort to "mirror" their existing stock, as with The Danish Royal Library?

The future is obscure even in the view of the Omroep administrators! I tried to view a few scores of this site but my processing of Dutch as a regional German language has limits. Can anybody elaborate a brief guide of the present site? Is a subscription required to download decent scans? Or is only a set of low resolution jpg images available? I hit my nose against U dient in te loggen before you can use this feature [OK]

@Coulonnus - you must sign up before you can download their pdf files. (free)

@WilliamBunting - certainly one of the reasons why we don't have all of their scans is that not all of them are in the public domain. We will have to find out if they have any agreements with the copyright holders for distribution.

I think that we (IMSLP-EU with its ISP, Project Leonardo Limited) can explore the possibility to mirror their scores on our servers. Currently, the main IMSLP-EU server is physically located in The Netherlands, so a mirroring of the Dutch Radio Music Library scores as a part of the IMSLP-EU project would also make sense from a local viewpoint.

Then, making scores available to the public for downloading may depend on the copyright status of the scores and on the possibilty to obtain permission (e.g., transfer to IMSLP-EU of permissions currently provided to the library) for scores that are not public domain in EU yet. This would need to be analysed in more detail.