Staff Papers

MusicAustralia: a Digital Strategy for Music

8 August 2002

An edited version of a paper presented by Robyn Holmes, Curator of Music, National Library of Australia, at the International Association of Music Libraries (IAML) Annual Conference, Berkeley, California, USA on 4 August 2002. 

MusicAustralia began its embryonic life through an analysis of the current state of music infrastructure in Australia.  How best could we develop long-term sustainable policy and planning in music in response to the challenges of the rapidly changing environment – and at a national level?

National Context

Our findings on the national situation were that:

  • the national infrastructure in music lacked coherence, funding and equity across domains and sectors;
  • resources were scattered, often hidden and not always well served by traditional library mechanisms;
  • collecting and access were hampered by structural, institutional and stylistic ‘silos’; and
  • adoption of new technological opportunities was piecemeal and unsystematic.

Moreover, there are some key incentives for addressing generic questions about Australian national information infrastructure and access to resources:

  • vast geographical distances and a small population;
  • a poorly developed philanthropic culture; and
  • a changing competitive grants environment favouring linkages across institutions and sectors.

These factors drive the need for cooperative and cost-effective solutions to national infrastructure problems.

International Context

We also surveyed international digital music initiatives Register of International Projects (http://www.musicaustralia.org/info/internationalprojects.html) .   Our survey revealed four key strands of research and development:

  • music digitisation projects;
  • music gateway type services;
  • web delivery and information retrieval in music; and
  • encoding standards for music and its description.

Each of these strands has parallels in other collaborative services and strategies being developed in Australia for a number of other subject areas. [1]  MusicAustralia was not conceived in a vacuum - but no Australian institution had tackled music infrastructure problems since a 1996 attempt to develop a research web infrastructure for higher education. Nor have other cooperative services hitherto led by the National Library of Australia crossed sectors or formats to the extent a music service will require.

In a federated national, state and local government system, and with music documented in different and complex formats, no single organisation could address these issues independently. Indeed, the national collection itself - published music and sound and archival collections - is primarily shared across two institutions.

The issues for collecting, preserving and providing ongoing access to music in an ‘e-world’ are also challenging. Rapid developments in digital music technology, web delivery of sound, score, image and multimedia, rights management and interactive technology systems are changing the face of music. This means that the ‘documents’ of musical culture are becoming more complex to capture, preserve, manage and deliver and necessitates stronger linkages between the musical world and the collecting institutions.

The significant paradigm shift in the interactions between cultural institutions and their users also demands a more musical use of the web, mirroring real musical experiences.  How can we bring our traditional approaches to managing and providing access to resources and information into an interactive environment, where experiencing and using musical data rather than text is the dominant mode?  An intrinsically musical use of the web, with ‘real’ musical information access and retrieval, needs to be an integral part of library services. Moving towards user-focused approaches creates new imperatives to embrace both the old and the new worlds of music-making.  Without such inclusion, libraries risk being marginalised from their music publics.

The National Library of Australia thus felt compelled to develop a national service for music that applies new technologies in an integrated and holistic way - a national digital strategy for music. Such a strategy needs to address:

  • convergence of technologies and methodologies;
  • interoperability;
  • cost-efficiency: to encourage participation and to generate content; and
  • collaboration and partnerships, across cultural institutions, the research and education sectors, music industry and music communities.

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A vision for MusicAustralia

The MusicAustralia vision:

A web-based music service to provide integrated access to Australian music resources and information - historical and contemporary - delivered seamlessly across institutions and formats is broad and innovative. It aims to encompass aspects of all current strands of international digital initiatives in music.

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MusicAustralia is more than a resource discovery service: it aims to provide seamless access to resources, services and information, and to encourage active participation. Our vision is that, when fully developed, users will be able to:

  • search for music resources, heritage and contemporary, across multiple websites and databases from a range of collecting institutions and the music sector;
  • access digitised and born digital Australian music in multiple formats;
  • search across both the federated resource service and information directories to locate information about people, organisations, collections, events and services;
  • access from a single interface services such as digital reference, interlibrary loan, ISMN, industry support, and interrogate musical data; and
  • collect and archive, self-archive, exhibit, market, publish, communicate on-line.

The project was divided into manageable stages, scoped from pilot to full production.  This approach includes regular evaluation points, and assists in managing the risks inherent in such an ambitious project.  The National Library commenced work on MusicAustralia, Stage 1 in November 2001. The Library sought the support of ScreenSound as a key partner.  Key content contributors, the Australian Music Centre and the Australia Council for the Arts - organisations keen to develop strategies for generating contemporary digital music content – also contributed to Stage 1 development. 

Stage 1 – the MusicAustralia Pilot – tackles the resource delivery component of the service, and aimed to investigate, develop and evaluate cooperative web delivery of music, in sound, digitised and digital score and related formats.  The MusicAustralia Pilot was completed on August 1, 2002 and is available for evaluation and feedback.

The MusicAustralia resource discovery model

The resource discovery model we chose built upon the Library’s previous experience and success in developing PictureAustralia. This federated service supports access to multiple collections of digitised images. In PictureAustralia users ‘discover’ digitised images from 20 institutions through a single web interface, and then navigate via image thumbnails back to the home institution’s server, where viewing copies and further information are located.

For example, users wishing to research that most famous of Australian music icons – soprano Dame Nellie Melba – can use a single search interface to locate images held by many different institutions

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select an image thumbnail, and navigate to the site of the image custodian to view the full size image:

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The service model is simple, effective and inherently cooperative, and includes:

  • a central repository of existing but re-purposed metadata hosted by the National Library; and
  • a distributed digital resource repository, where each partner organisation stores and delivers its content.

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But music poses further challenges:

  • PictureAustralia delivers a single object type – the image.  MusicAustralia will deliver digitised sheet music and larger scores, audio recordings, born digital scores and MIDI files, pictorial images, manuscripts, multimedia and text. 
  • Single images are relatively simple to deliver.  MusicAustralia’s objects are not so simple: 
    • digitised scores and manuscripts contain multiple images which must connect to form a whole;
    • born digital scores pose significant challenges due to divergence in software approaches;
    • audio recordings pose a number of delivery issues, including ‘to stream or not to stream’, how to integrate digital audio with meaningful bibliographic information, and how to deliver these chunky files at resolutions which make for good listening – but can be available to the many Australians without access to broadband services.
  • We want to provide sufficient information to allow users to navigate between related items in different formats, for example, an audio recording of a particular piece of sheet music.

And perhaps most importantly, Australia’s cultural organisations have not as yet digitised many of their music resources. MusicAustralia has not only to deliver but also to encourage and support generation of digital music content.

Delivering Digital Music Objects

The MusicAustralia pilot: Single Institution/Single Format Delivery

So, the first challenge for participants is to develop a digitisation process and delivery system for their music materials. Key questions accompany this challenge:

  • What do we want to digitise and why?
  • What financial, technical and human resources do we need?
  • What formats are we dealing with?
  • How will we store, preserve, manage and deliver our digital collection?

Both the National Library and ScreenSound have addressed these issues within the context of the pilot. In the process we have aimed to develop solutions – specifications, standards, and mechanisms – that can be adopted and adapted by other institutions.

The National Library has recently implemented a digital storage and management system to support its growing digitisation program not only of pictures but also maps, manuscripts, sheet music and audio.  Access points to digital items are both through the Library’s catalogue and through a number of federated services. The system stores, manages and delivers both preservation master copies and derivatives in a robust, coherent and permanent way, including the use of Persistent Identifiers to ensure that digital resources can be confidently referenced, now and into the future.

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Digitised sheet music has been used to test the delivery of multi-page objects in a single format, with all the apparatus needed for turning pages, web readability, inspecting at higher resolutions and printing good quality copies of music. 

The National Library has also implemented a large digital audio storage system, and will shortly commence work on delivery mechanisms for audio, including possible integration of oral history audio and audio, and support for locating music ‘fragments’ which may be buried deep within a folklore field interview.

The other organizations participating in the pilot are developing their own systems.  ScreenSound is primarily addressing the many issues related to audio delivery.  ScreenSound delivers its digital audio files directly through its catalogue, and is investigating the implications of a number of delivery issues on this method.  These include delivering file sizes to suit different bandwidths, and potential needs such as delivering ‘fragments’ of files, or limiting delivery to ScreenSound’s own premises in some circumstances, including complying with copyright restrictions. 

The Australian Music Centre aims to develop procedures for composers to submit their digitally generated scores as digital files and provide access to these via the web.  It also aims to develop digitisation on demand services for existing paper based scores.  The MusicAustralia Pilot includes a range of content types to test the requirements for collecting, preserving, printing and delivering scores and parts online.

Finally, the Australia Council for the Arts is currently supporting a new music industry initiative to aggregate and deliver contemporary popular music online.  This initiative is testing a range of solutions for aggregating ‘hot off the press’ music generated by independent artists outside of institutional frameworks.  As both MusicAustralia and the New Australian Music Online initiative are in early stages of development, good opportunities to ensure compatibility of data models, and interoperability of the services are being exploited.

The MusicAustralia Pilot: Cooperative Delivery

MusicAustralia, however, is not simply about supporting and generating mechanisms for single institutional delivery of music.  Its value is to enable users to search and navigate seamlessly across different formats of music, institutions and sectors. Cooperative delivery of these individual digital music objects thus poses an additional layer of complexity. 

Managing multiple music and music related objects is not so difficult as part of a single project, when digital objects can be described for a specific purpose and integrated using proprietary multimedia software. Excellent examples include the Levy and Duke University digital sheetmusic collections, with their impressive descriptive analysis and depth of functionality.

But the MusicAustralia model relies upon building onto and aggregating existing processes, including standard catalogue records, adapted to a web environment. This means retrieving music objects of different types – digitised and digitally generated – from multiple and disparate databases and allowing the user to interrogate and navigate these and to listen to and view music simultaneously.

The key aim is maximise the quantity of music coverage and to generate the creation and delivery of digital music objects. The service model needs to facilitate the participation of smaller, specialist and poorly resourced organisations and independent artists, as well as large national institutions. This imperative also means that MusicAustralia’s storage and delivery infrastructure needs to be non-proprietary and standards based.

The MusicAustralia Model

Institutional records for digital music items are converted through rules sets, to an agreed qualified Dublin Core set, stored as XML records and indexed for searching by a database application.

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This process can be illustrated by using ‘Waltzing Matilda’, perhaps Australia’s most famous national song, as an example.  The  National Library’s MARC record for the first printed version (1905) recognises the composer as the prime creator:

7412026

LDR    New record            Music, printed/micro  Monograph          

Full level with item  Full ISBD (AACR2)    

Online             

001      000007412026

005      20010410150137.0

008      900918s1905    xnasgn         nn   eng d

040      ‡aANL ‡beng ‡dVSL

048      ‡bvn01 ‡aka01

082 04 ‡a783.24215990994 ‡220

100 1    ‡aCowan, Marie.

245 10 ‡aWaltzing Matilda ‡h[music] : ‡bsong / ‡cwords by A.B. Paterson ; music arranged by Marie Cowan.

260       ‡a[Sydney?] : ‡bPrinted and published for the proprietors,  ‡c[1905?] ‡e(Sydney : ‡fTurner& Henderson)

300       ‡a1 score ([2] p.) ; ‡c36 cm.

500       ‡aFor voice and piano.

500      ‡aAt head of title page: Sung with immense success!!!! The popular song.

500      ‡aLithography by Turner & Henderson.

500      ‡aBelieved to have been issued as promotional material for James Inglis & Co. Ltd, Sydney, whose advertisement for Billy tea appears on the back cover.

530       ‡aAlso available in an electronic version via the Internet

                                at: http://nla.gov.au/nla.mus-an7412026

600 10  ‡aPaterson, A. B. ‡q(Andrew Barton), ‡d1864-1941. ‡xMusical        settings.

650  0   ‡aNational songs ‡zAustralia.

700 1     ‡aPaterson, A. B. ‡q(Andrew Barton), ‡d1864-1941.

856 41   ‡uhttp://nla.gov.au/nla.mus-an7412026

850         ‡aANL ‡cMUS NL mba 783.24215990994 C874 ‡cpf 784.4 PAT

ScreenSound Australia’s MAVIS record of the first recording that popularised the song internationally in 1938 highlights performance roles.

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These records are mapped to our agreed MusicAustralia set of qualified Dublin Core elements:

Metadata (title, contributor?, publisher?, date?, type*, format*, identifier, source, language*, relation?, rights*, subject?, description?)

Title (mainTitle, subtitle*, otherTitle*)

Contributor (principalRole*, composer*, lyricist*, librettist*, musician*, group*, arranger*, conductor*, singer*, unqualifiedContributor*)

Publisher (namePublisher?, recordLabel?, place?)

Date (produced?, released?, recorded?, created?, published?, broadcast?)

Type (#PCDATA)

Format (medium?, extentFileSize?, extentDuration?, extentSource?)

Identifier (persistentIdentifier+, standardIdentifier*, matrixNo?, catalogueNo*, plateNo?, publisherNo?, systemNo?)

Source (institution+)

Language (#PCDATA)

Relation (isPartOf*, hasPart*, isVersionOf*, hasVersion*, isFormatOf*, hasFormat*, isPerformanceOf*, hasPerformance*, isRelatedTo*)

Rights (#PCDATA)>

Subject (genre*, heading*, classification*, name*)>

Description (#PCDATA)>

Persistent Identifier (PI?, objectType, mimeType, URI)>

Standard Identifier (scheme, idValue)>

The resulting records are stored as XML, for example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>

<metadata>

<title>

  <mainTitle>Waltzing Matilda</mainTitle>

  <subtitle>song /</subtitle>

  <otherTitle>For voice and piano.</otherTitle>

  <otherTitle>At head of title page: Sung with immense success!!!! The popular song.</otherTitle>

  <otherTitle>Lithography by Turner & Henderson.</otherTitle>

  <otherTitle>Believed to have been issued as promotional material for James Inglis & Co. Ltd, Sydney, whose advertisement for Billy tea appears on the back cover.</otherTitle>

  </title>

<contributor>

  <principalRole>Cowan, Marie.</principalRole>

  <composer>Cowan, Marie.</composer>

  <unqualifiedContributor>Paterson, A. B.(Andrew Barton),1864-1941.</unqualifiedContributor>

  </contributor>

<publisher>

  <namePublisher>Printed and published for the proprietors,</namePublisher>

  <place>[Sydney?] :</place>

  </publisher>

<date>

  <published>[1905?]</published>

  </date>

  <type>Printed music</type>

<format>

  <extentSource>1 score ([2] p.) ;36 cm.</extentSource>

  </format>

<identifier>

<persistentIdentifier>

  <PI>nla.mus-an7412026-s1-t</PI>

  <objectType>Thumbnail</objectType>

  <mimeType>image/jpeg</mimeType>

  <URI>http://nla.gov.au/nla.mus-an7412026-s1-t</URI>

  </persistentIdentifier>

<persistentIdentifier>

  <PI>nla.mus-an7412026</PI>

  <objectType>Sheet music/Scores</objectType>

  <mimeType>text/html</mimeType>

  <URI>http://nla.gov.au/nla.mus-an7412026</URI>

  </persistentIdentifier>

<persistentIdentifier>

  <PI>nla.mus-an7412026</PI>

  <objectType>Multimedia resources</objectType>

  <mimeType>application/smil</mimeType>

  <URI>/data/smil/nla.mus-an7412026.smil</URI>

  </persistentIdentifier>

  <systemNo>an7412026</systemNo>

  </identifier>

<source>

  <institution>National Library of Australia</institution>

  </source>

  <language>English</language>

<relation>

  <isVersionOf>an4784490</isVersionOf>

  <isVersionOf>an6012202</isVersionOf>

  <isVersionOf>an5749765</isVersionOf>

  <hasPerformance>MAVIS: 184122</hasPerformance>

  <hasPerformance>MAVIS: 471322</hasPerformance>

  <hasPerformance>an8847307</hasPerformance>

  <isRelatedTo>an13027891</isRelatedTo>

  </relation>

<subject>

  <heading>National songs; Australia.</heading>

  <classification>783.24215990994; 20</classification>

  <name>Paterson, A. B.; (Andrew Barton),; 1864-1941.; Musical settings.</name>

  </subject>

  <description>words by A.B. Paterson ; music arranged by Marie Cowan.For voice and piano.At head of title page: Sung with immense success!!!! The popular song.Lithography by Turner & Henderson.Believed to have been issued as promotional material for James Inglis & Co. Ltd, Sydney, whose advertisement for Billy tea appears on the back cover.</description>

  </metadata>

and indexed for searching by a database application. [2]  Pending testing of automating some relationships through matching selected fields, relationships data was hand-coded for the MusicAustralia Pilot.

When searched by users, these items are retrieved in a result set that includes many related objects in different formats.

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0

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The results set includes appropriate visual identification of format, a summary record, and displays the source of the institution delivering the object. Users can navigate to the detailed bibliographic information and related items:

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or select the thumbnail or icon representing their chosen digital resource and navigate to the resource on the contributing organisation’s website.

The National Library’s sheet music is displayed in a way that simulates use of the music itself, and offers additional features.  Users can turn pages, print, zoom in, view thumbnails, or skip directly to pages described with enhanced metadata.

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Users can play audio recordings separately or select multiple recordings – creating their own play lists.

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Users can view scores and listen to audio simultaneously by having both items open in separate browser windows, and moving back and forth as desired.

For selected objects, we have extended this principle to create synchronised versions of score images and sound – using Synchronised Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) – which are displayed as multimedia objects:

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We have also tested delivery of large multi-movement contemporary scores, generated in proprietary music software.  These allow the user to manipulate the object with all the advantages of MIDI, transposition, tempo variation etc that web versions of the software allow.  We are currently working with scores notated using Finale:

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and Sibelius:

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and are working with the Australian Music Centre to develop guidelines for composers, so that their web published scores are accessible by federated services such as PictureAustralia.

Unresolved issues

The MusicAustralia team is currently addressing a number of issues arising from the pilot project.  These primarily relate to:

  • Exploiting the richness of existing datasets and identifying those areas where existing data may not meet MusicAustralia’s optimal requirements;
  • The complexities of trying to automate navigational pathways between related objects which may be in different formats and come from different institutions, and the associated issues of appropriate data modelling;
  • Technical issues, primarily related to delivery of digitised audio to suit a range of bandwidths;
  • Business issues, in particular digital rights management to manage the issues of delivering objects which are not in the public domain.

Where to from here?

The pilot will be used to evaluate the technical, metadata, delivery, content development and resource issues for scaling up to a production level resource discovery service by mid 2003.  Over the next year we aim to:

  • Address how can we move from labour intensive conversion and contribution of test records to a point where data can be harvested, both for the MusicAustralia services, and for Open Archives Initiatives;
  • Assist other institutions to embark on the music digitisation adventure, by providing standards and technical advice;
  • Scope and define the next stages of the broader vision; and
  • Develop wider institutional, industry, research and community partnerships.

Perhaps, in the end, the key to the future success of MusicAustralia will lie in our capacity to excite the imagination, to bring together and create incentives for people and organisations to participate, as much as to resolve the technological challenges facing music in a digital world.



[1]  The National Library of Australia is committed to making its own collections accessible to the widest possible public through its digitisation, delivery and web access strategies.   In addition to being the home of the National Bibliographic Database (Kinetica), the Library supports a number of cooperative specialist resource discovery services – many of which have are based in the tertiary education, rather than the state sector. The Library convenes the Australian Subject Gateways Forum which provides a forum for sharing standards and problem solving strategies.  The Library has also developed directories to national resources and information, including the Australian Libraries Gateway, the Register of Australian Archives and Manuscripts and the Oral History Directory.  It produces produced value-added directories to key components of its own collections, such as the Mura Gadi directory to National Library holdings on Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history and culture.  It is currently developing a directory service – Australia Dancing! – in collaboration with the dance industry.  The Library is active in the development of international information standards, and is world leader in the areas of digital archiving and preservation, as evidenced by the PANDORA archive of Australian online content, and the PADI Gateway to information on preservation of digital objects and services.

[2]  The software currently being used by the Library to gather the metadata and build the search index is MetaStar from Blue Angel Technologies.   The National Library has just announced  its selection of a new software application – the TeraText™ Database System (DBS),   developed by InQuirion Pty Ltd, a spin-off company of RMIT University - to support delivery of its metadata-based resource discovery services.  MusicAustralia will be migrated to the new platform by mid 2003.

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