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Two Series of Publications

RIPM produces electronic publications in two series: RIPM Annotated Series and RIPM Preservation Series. While they can be searched simultaneously, it is useful to think of these research tools as two independent search and browse systems, each offering different features and possibilities.

The Annotated Series consists of RIPM Retrospective Index and the RIPM Online Archive, collectively titled, RIPM Retrospective Index with Full Text.

RIPM Annotated Series

RIPM Retrospective Index

Contains highly annotated indexes prepared by scholars with links to full text found in the Online Archive

RIPM Retrospective Index with Full Text

Contains browsable full-text journals treated in Index, with links from citations to full text, and with annotated calendars (tables of contents) introducing each issue

There are two fundamental advantages to this method of access: the user searches an index rather than the full text and each search term is presented in context. This has the advantage of providing access both to indexing terms and to the context in which the terms appear. For example, if Berlioz writes an harmonic analysis of a musical passage without mention of the word “harmony,” the indexer will supply this term in the content description, and the user, searching for the term “harmony” will locate the pertinent passage even though the searched term does not appear in the text. However, this production method requires an extensive amount of time and is costly, for all indexing, and content analysis is produced by scholars. This is also a labor intensive process that necessarily limits the number of journals that can be treated.

The Preservation Series, an expansion of the former RIPM e-Library, offers a new, economical approach to delivering the full text of complete runs of rare, primary source music periodicals in a searchable format. It will contain a number of individual subject-focused databases, offering access to journals that are not treated in the Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals with Full Text.

RIPM Preservation Series

  1. European and North American Music Periodicals
  2. Jazz Periodicals

Contains browsable and searchable full text journals with links from search results to highlighted search terms on journal pages.

The Preservation Series was created in order to increase the pace at which RIPM can make searchable full-text music journals available and do so in a comparatively economical manner. Access to RIPM Preservation Series content is based upon optical character recognition (OCR) technology that transforms pictures of letters into text and consequently permits searching through all words, using boolean operators to refine searches.