Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale
nonprofit organization offering digital collections and tools for locating research on musical topics
Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (International Repertory of Music Literature; Internationales Repertorium der Musikliteratur), commonly known by its acronym RILM, is a nonprofit organization that offers digital collections and advanced tools for locating research on all topics related to music. Its mission is "to make this knowledge accessible to research and performance communities worldwide….to include the music scholarship of all countries, in all languages, and across all disciplinary and cultural boundaries, thereby fostering research in the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences." Central to RILM's work and mission is the international bibliography of scholarship relating to all facets of music research.
History
RILM was founded in 1966 by the American musicologist Barry S. Brook (1918–1997) under the joint sponsorship of the International Musicological Society (IMS) and the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres (IAML). In 2007 the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM) joined as a third sponsoring organization.
During 1967 and 1968, RILM developed its first set of computer programs for the automated processing and sorting of bibliographic records and author/subject indexes. They ran first on the mainframe IBM computer IBM System/360 at the computing center of The City University of New York. The S/360 was delivered by IBM in 1964 and it was at that time the most advanced computing machine. The original IBM S/360 software was later migrated to IBM System/370 and used in the production of RILM Abstracts for twenty years, from 1969 to 1988. RILM's development of procedures for computerized data processing was immediately adopted by Répertoire International de Littérature d’Art (RILA), founded upon RILM's model, which started publishing abstracts in 1975.
In 1979 RILM entered an agreement with Lockheed Research Laboratory in Palo Alto, a division of Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, Inc., for the distribution of its data through the telephone lines.
“Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale” enters the record as nonprofit organization offering digital collections and tools for locating research on musical topics. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Répertoire, International and Littérature can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Répertoire, International and Littérature provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7386143. VIAF identifies the subject as 155907817. The Library of Congress control number is n50056805. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1966, 1918, 1997 and 2007.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale primary sources, Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale archive and Répertoire research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale”?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
- What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.