Images from the Milan Conservatory Library

[KGill]

I hope you are joking! Or do you really think that if you find a composer's name on a manuscript, that name is always right? And maybe do you think also that any manuscript has the composer's name on it? Do you think that cataloguing a musical manuscript just means copying what is on the frontispiece?

Sorry, it seems the information level here is dramatically lower than I expected: -(

Well, I hope you are joking, because it seems to me you haven't taken even a few minutes to actually look through this site and see how it is run. Indeed, I find your tone very rude and rather arrogant - you essentially imply that IMSLP is maintained by a bunch of amateurs who don't know the first thing about library sciences, and that the people who work over in Milan are somehow magically endowed with the ability to catalogue any musical document with absolute accuracy. Do we need to drag this into the gutter with empty insults? I'm disappointed; I would have thought we could reach some sort of compromise without resorting to that.

[Generoso]

I am a performer and use digitized scores as a sort of personal library that I can take with me when I am away from home. If I have the urge to play a piece of music I can just open up my Mac and open up that score and play to my hearts content. This makes it possible to travel much lighter as I do not have to carry multiple scores and parts with me, which as every one knows traveling on plane is getting more and more difficult if you have a rather large instrument and even if you don't.

I went a step further when I found out about this wonderful site called IMSLP. I decided to upload the scores (the ones in the Public Domain) and share with other musicians the treasures that I have acquired over the years from my own personal library. I figured that there must be many other cellists/musicians/music lovers who would love to use these old scores as I have. There are many pieces that would otherwise be unheard of or lost in the back of some dark room. I had reasoned in the back of my mind that if everyone uploaded just a few scores of their own that where not online yet, we would have a wonderful amount of music to learn/ relearn/ discover/ explore. This has in fact become the case at hand where I am so pleased when someone uploads a score that I do not have. If I find the piece interesting I can find a possibility to program one or more of these works to be played live in a concert and bring these forgotten (as well as the famous) works to the far reaches of the earth through my playing.

The digitization of these score has made this all possible. Perhaps the most significant use of digitization for libraries is the ability to preserve and provide universal access to musical scores, manuscripts and rare editions. This technology has made it possible for individuals around the world to share in the joy of these wonderful treasures. And digitizing rarities also protects them from too much handling. A few very important points are that copyright is not forever, it does NOT exist to protect the author, copying or digitizing does not confer copyright. We also need to ensure that libraries are working collaboratively in their efforts to digitize materials so that together they create a critical mass of research sources that are complementary and not duplicative, and that begin to fulfill the promise of coordinated digital collection building. However, at present there is no central source of information about what has been digitized, and with what care in the process, as there is for titles that have been microfilmed for preservation but IMSLP is a good starting point in showing which works are there and which works are still missing.

More and more Libraries (such as your fabulous library in Milano) are digitizing their collections and making them possible for others to view. Scanning is a process fixed in time. You scan something once and if you do it correctly you are done and can move on to the next project. Libraries have been digitizing portions of their collections for more than twenty years, but recent opportunities to work with private partners, such as Google, Microsoft, and others, on mass digitization has opened up possibilities that were unimaginable just a few years ago. Private funding, commercially developed technology, and market-oriented sensibilities together may generate larger aggregations of digitized books far sooner than the library community had dreamed possible.

I am not so interested in your scan physically as an object. But I am very interested in the music in it that was scanned. I am interested in the different editions of various pieces and comparing them (early editions and later editions as well as the contemporary editions that I have in my home library). I am interested in playing and performing these pieces. I am so happy to find pieces in your library that I did not know existed! These are my delights! I only like to share these treats with others as well so others can have similar pleasures.

I wish you all the best in your travels next week to Dublin. For those that do not know, IAML is the international body that promotes the activities of music libraries. This year, for the first time, they have chosen Dublin as the venue for their International Conference (24-29th July 2011) http://www.iaml.info/iaml-uk-irl/dublin_2011/index.html I would have hoped that a representative of IMSLP would go there as well and help show the importance of what IMSLP is doing for music and the students of music as well as the wonderful work you provide for the world with your great institution in Milano. I am sure there is a solution to help both of us. It is only win-win for everyone in the the end although you may not see it that way right now.

All my regards,
Generoso

[Notenschreiber]

I think it makes a big difference: if somebody is looking for a score which is not yet available in digital form and you can provide him with this score by
a new digitalization, he is unfortunately forced to pay the price for it, if the score is important enough for him.
But if he can see the already digitalized image and has the choice to pay high fees or to take screen shots, the decision will be clear.
And if there are 10 or 100 interested people for the same score, all will do the same. What a nonsense! Is it not much better to share the result of these efforts with others?

[Philidor]

Hi Philidor,

Are you certain? If Rupert Murdoch woke up tomorrow and donated €10,000,000 to the Milan Conservatory Library, you'd be obliged, under Italian law, to return the cheque? I truly hope we can reach agreement on this. It's a great shame to place huge costs between musicians and public domain music manuscripts.

I'm 90% sure that if Mr. Murdoch decides to donate €10,000,000 to the Milan Conservatory (the Library is not a separate entity), we should ask him to convert his money in something we need. He can buy and donate us new music instruments, books, refurbishing of the concert hall, a new heating system, a new building, create a foundation to promote music teaching, what else, but we can't accept his money.

Gabriele,

If you type "library bequest gift donation" into Google you'll find libraries all over the world describing their donations policy. They all accept money. Billionaires and millionaires love leaving their money to libraries and museums. Indeed, many were started by an initial donation from a wealthy man.

It is inconceivable that Milan Conservatory does not accept cash donations. Indeed, your institution's own statutes mention donation income.

Phil

[Philidor]

Gabriele,

Here's the Vatican Library's donations page

http://www.vaticanlibrary.va/home.php?p ... i&ling=eng

You can click on a range of funds, including their manuscript digitization project, taking you to a cash donations page:

http://www.vaticanlibrary.va/home.php?p ... &cat=digit

What's good enough for the Pope is good enough for the Milan Conservatory, no?

Phil

[Conservatorio_Milano]

Gabriele,

Here's the Vatican Library's donations page

http://www.vaticanlibrary.va/home.php?p ... i&ling=eng

You can click on a range of funds, including their manuscript digitization project, taking you to a cash donations page:

http://www.vaticanlibrary.va/home.php?p ... &cat=digit

What's good enough for the Pope is good enough for the Milan Conservatory, no?

Phil

Dear Phil.

Vatican City is not Italy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_City

I have asked our administration office for an official answer about donations. As soon as I get it, I'll let you know: I'll be happy if I'm wrong...

[Philidor]

I have asked our administration office for an official answer about donations.

Thanks! But seriously, the idea of a Milan Conservatory bureaucrat responding: "Oh no no no we can't accept it take it away how terribly unlawful!" should a rich man bequest them some cash is ridiculous. They'd grab it with both hands, stuff it in the Milan Conservatory bank account, and then spend it in accordance with your statutes.

[haydenmuhl]

Gabriele, I've read through the thread, and what seems to be at the heart of the issue is this.

Our digital library is intended as an extension of our physical library: that is, you can read online, wherever in the world, our digitized documents at no charge, exactly like when you sit in our reading room. If reading the document online is not enough for you and you want to download a document from our digital library you are, in our view, asking us for a reproduction, and this is the reason why the library is asking you for a fee payment.

When it comes to hard copies of documents, there is a clear distinction between viewing a library copy, and acquiring a reproduction of your own. When viewing a hard copy in the library, the hard copy comes off the shelf, the library patron reads some part of it, then the hard copy goes back on the shelf before the patron leaves the library. Reproduction of a hard copy requires the consumption of resources like paper and ink.

This distinction does not hold up as well when working with digital media across the internet. In order to view one of the scores available from your conservatory, I must first download it. There is no way around this. An analogous situation with a hard copy would be that if a patron wants to view a book in a library, the book must be taken off the shelf, photocopied, the photocopies are given to the patron, and the original is put back on the shelf. In order to enforce the distinction between viewing and reproduction, the patron would then be prohibited from taking the photocopies with him when he leaves the library. The photocopies would be discarded, and new photocopies would need to be made for each new patron wishing to view the same book. This is why some of the IMSLP users do not understand your distinction between "viewing" and "downloading" a score.

Also buried in this is the (fully legitimate) desire of the Conservatory to offset the costs associated with digitization. I wonder, is this the main concern that is driving the distinction between "viewing" and "downloading"? If so, what are the main costs associated with your digital services? Is it the initial scanning? Bandwidth? Server maintenance? Backups?

I don't have any solutions for offsetting the cost of initial scans, but there are likely solutions for other costs. If bandwidth is an issue, you could limit the resolution of the free versions of scanned scores, and make high resolution copies available by subscription, or by a per document fee. Server maintenance and back-up could possibly be offset by working with a third party to set up some type of formal mirror. A formal mirror would also offset bandwidth concerns.

On a similar note, you write...

We, the library, are not worried by preservation of the music in the document. We are worried by preservation of the document itself. Our digital library maintains high quality versions of the images, of the whole documents, including covers, white pages and what else, accompanied by metadata created according to the more up-to-date international best practices. All of this is under weekly full backup and tapes are stored in a bank vault. This is digital preservation, according to the standards: having plenty of PDFs going around in the web is not.

I agree that "lots of people will download it" is not a robust backup strategy, but would a formal mirror, or third party hosting which meets certain standards be acceptable? I do not speak for IMSLP, and I do not know what their backup strategy consists of, but a formal mirroring agreement (for example, with IMSLP) would increase the security of these digital resources, just as off site backups do.

[Caprotti]

Just to add some informations/concerns :

1) The library of Milan Conservatory received in the past 4 years a modest but not negligible contribution from local administrations and private bank institutions finalized to the digitalization project

2) The actual fees requested for reproductions are completely out of proportion when compared to the photocopy fees requested by the library till a couple of years ago.

3) The same library , instead of choosing an independent pattern, should have spent more efforts in order to be inserted in the wider "Internet Culturale" network of National italian libraries. I point out that "Internet Culturale" makes now available middle resolution scans (directly merged into pdfs) of manuscript scores that are often much more rare and desirable than the ones stored in Milano. The fact that the library of Milan Conservatorio is not formally considered as a primary interest national library (as S.Pietro a Majella or the Venice marciana are) is no more a valid excuse : see for instance the higly interesting PRINTED scores reproductions of Rossini operas that were recently made available on Internet Culturale thru the Rossini Foundation of Pesaro.

From the previous discussion it is clear how the actual rules choosen by Milan Conservatorio are completely against any reasonable management of so high value cultural goods, above all when compared to the main european and american public and private institutions.