Authority Control in the Field of Music: Names and Titles

Music is a global and independent language: its main feature is being performed and disseminated far beyond national boundaries. The cataloguing process takes into account all kinds of documents preserving music and information about musical events: printed and manuscript music, sound recordings, librettos and concert programs, music periodicals, and books on music. International repertories, reference tools, and standards were developed by the mid-20th century. Authority control for music materials focuses on two different groups of problems: common access points like names have to fulfil specific needs, and terms identifying and giving access to the musical content, such as the uniform title, have to be introduced and controlled. Several issues concerning names need to be faced, varying from the different writings of the same name, to transliteration, to attribution and disambiguation. Specific issues concern music materials: access through generic titles such as “sonata” is often frustrating. There is thus the needto create controlled access points through content-related data such as medium of performance, musical form, thematic catalogue number, and music incipit. Since 1951, the International Association ofMusic Libraries, Archives and Music Documentation Centres has faced issues of authority control by promoting the publication of an international cataloguing code, through specific working groups (on the structure for uniform titles, on UNIMARC, on the exchange of authority data, and on indexing of music performances), and through international cataloguing projects. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: Website: © 2004 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.]