Digital Music Collections of National and Major Public Libraries of German-speaking Countries

Abstract

The article presents the brief description of freely available selected digital music collections of the national and largest public libraries of German-speaking countries: Austria, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland. The author studies the main stages of the historical formation of musical culture in the German-speaking environment, chronologically correlated with the brilliant names of composers, founders and recognized authorities of the classical music school. As an illustrative material, the author gives diagrams with quantitative characteristics of the distribution of digital content by the types and quantity of documents, as well as personalities of composers. The paper provides current links to resources and thematic portals created by libraries within the framework of sectoral collaboration.National and major public libraries collect and store documentary heritage, including musical collections, which differ by the type diversity of documents. Digital collections generated by libraries based on their own priorities and technical capabilities contribute to the physical preservation of documents. Digital music collections act as promoters of the great heritage of the classical music school, which has received recognition on the world musical Olympus. For the first time, the paper considers the combined heritage of the classical music school of the national and the largest German-language libraries of free access. Thanks to modern technologies of document digitisation, the use of thermographic camera (for reproducing filigree signs), creation of comfortable interface in language understandable to user, libraries expand the audience of researchers, going beyond the country, contribute to conducting scientific research in a remote format. Libraries are becoming a progressive, democratic platform and an equal partner of the world scientific community and at the same time receive additional funding for the implementation of the next ambitious projects.