Automated resources
Collective library catalogs
- Worldcat Searches the catalogs of more than 10,000 libraries in the world. Digitized scores sometimes show up in the results.
- Europeana Searches the catalogs of 48 European national and university libraries.Digitized scores sometimes show up in the results - most often from the Bavarian State Library (BSB) - click Access Online in the right column. But with some links you hit a members only message!
- Internet Culturale Italian libraries. Leave the button on Cataloghi instead of Biblioteca digitale.
- SBN Italy - Another (or the same, but different link?) Italian collating library search ("Catalogo del Servizio Bibliotecario Nazionale")
- RISM Répertoire International des Sources Musicales. Mainly manuscripts, often before 1800, though searches can easily turn up descriptions of autographs/copies/early editions of works written between then and the 21st century.
- Sheet Music Consortium 33 US and Australian libraires.
- Karlsruhe Virtual Katalog - searches library catalogs in Germany and Austria primarily (though note its "other libraries" link which contains a form-button for, among others, the important British collation-catalogue COPAC (which covers a number of large libraries in the UK not fully or at all "known" to Worldcat, such as the Royal Academy of Music's library, e.g.))
Individual library catalogs
See generally: IMSLP:Universities and Libraries.
Other catalog lists and guides
- University of Queensland A selection of national and university libraries offering an online public access catalogue (OPAC).
- MusicBrainz, an open music encyclopedia that collects music metadata and makes it available to the public. Among the many kinds of data MusicBrainz curates are catalogues of musical works (e.g. Piano Sonata No. 23 "Appassionata"), and of artists like composers, musicians, and groups (e.g. Beethoven). MusicBrainz has a mechanism to link from their work pages to scores at IMSLP. A subtle but important contribution of MusicBrainz is that they define unique numerical identifiers for each work and artist, allowing multiple data sources to correlate their holdings by using the same identifier. They are a useful link catalogue.
- Digital Resources for Musicology, a catalogue of links to "substantial open-access projects of use to musicians and musicologists". Maintained by the Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities, at Stanford University.
Scans of printed resources
- Carl Friedrich Whistling, Handbuch der Musikalischen Literatur.... First issued in 1817 to list music then available in print and covering the period from about 1780 until 1815. Ten supplements were issued from 1818 until 1827. In 1828 a second edition of the Handbuch was issued. In 1829, Whistling issued a supplement to the 1828 edition and then started issuing monthly updates, the Monatsbericht, which was soon taken over by Hofmeister.
- Hofmeister Monatsbericht
- Monthly publication 1829-1947 giving details of publisher issues of over 330,000 titles. Only the volumes up to 1900 have been scanned in by the project here.
- Mirror ONB (Austria National Library) hosted - has scans of images of the pages of each(?) month of the published Monatsberichte from 1829 to 1947, without the search feature or text transcriptions of the RHUL site but with greater range.
- Hathi Trust Digital Library currently has eight volumes of the Hofmeister Monatsbericht from the 1890s that are searchable. Additional volumes in their collection are non PD-US and support only a limited search.
- Hathi Trust Digital Library currently has searchable volumes for the years 1858-1863, 1877-1888, and 1890-1908. Those that are non PD-US support only a limited search. Hathi Trust's PD-US volumes are available on IMSLP.
- Hathi Trust Digital Library currently has searchable volumes for the years 1845-1859, 1868-1885, 1892-1918. Additional volumes covering the years from 1919 to 1933 support only a limited search. Hathi Trust's PD-US volumes are available on IMSLP.
- Franz Pazdírek, Universal-Handbuch der Musikliteratur aller Zeiten und Völker. Produced between 1904 and 1910. The volumes serve as a listing of "music in print". Apparently, 34 volumes were produced but it seems possible that later printings combined volumes as some editions claim 13 volumes.
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- Fétis, Biographie universelle des musiciens The catalog feature is only part of its articles, but potentially useful.
- Bibliographie de la France - a regular (as of 1811) and continuing listing of French copyright registrations in all fields including music (our page is a table of links to known scans at Google and Archive.org mainly; the Bibliothèque Nationale de France has a long list of their own scans of this publication, and Hathitrust has digitized a few volumes from just after World War I, as well.) Very useful for dating works published by French publishers (often though not always first published, sometimes before their first publication elsewhere, especially if the composer had some French connection even if they were not themselves French; Chopin's works were often co-premiere-published in France, and some major composers not born or perhaps even resident in the country often had arrangements with firms there. In all, a good resource to check, though alas difficult to search, at present.)
Search engines providing the work info for a melody
- Repertoire international des sources musicales Offers a few languages. Limited to 1600-1800. Click Advanced Search. Sometimes gives access to the score in a library clicking In Collection, View Online
- Musipedia The Open music encyclopedia. Welcomes your contribution to add missing melodies. Click Keyboard Search.
Miscellaneous
- Contemporary journals such as the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, the earlier Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, and many others report on new releases of music, on concerts, gave detailed reviews (with music examples, often), etc. Zeitschriften (Wikisource, German) is a list with among other things many links to digitized copies of such journals, some little-known. For determining information about a work you are uploading (or someone else has, recently) - premiere/early performance information, for example, or context not available from the score provided - or for many other uses (another example: necrologies, homage articles- N[eue]Z[eitschrift]M issues from the year 1935 have several articles on Richard Wetz who died that year - very early contemporary worklists, etc. - these can be very useful to skim. Can take awhile though. Archive.org's search is so-so; be patient and emphasize reading over quick searching...)
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