(IAML; Fr. Association Internationale des Bibliothèques, Archives et Centres de Documentation Musicaux, AIBM; Ger. Internationale Vereinigung der Musikbibliotheken, Musikarchive und Musikdokumentationszentren, IVMB).
An organization formed after World War II to promote international cooperation and standardization in such matters as cataloguing, standards of service, personnel training and the exchange of materials between libraries. The body was founded in Paris in 1951, after preparatory meetings in Florence (1949) and Lüneburg (1950), as the Association Internationale des Bibliothèques Musicales. In 1980 its name was changed to embrace the broader interests of music archives and documentation centres, though the acronyms have remained the same. By 1998 IAML had about 2000 individual and institutional members in 45 countries throughout the world.
The association operates through a network of Professional Branches (divided by type of library, such as archives, broadcasting, music teaching institutions, public, research), Subject Commissions (grouped by type of activity, including audio-visual materials, cataloguing, bibliography, service and training) and Working Groups for specific projects. They all meet at IAML's annual conferences (or, every third year, a congress with general assembly). Two earlier groups, the Commission on Phonothèques and the Music Information Centres branch, split off to form their own associations: the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA), and the International Association of Music Information Centres (IAMIC).
Since 1954 IAML has published a quarterly journal, Fontes artis musicae (FAM), which focusses on topics in music librarianship and documentation, bibliography and musicology; it also includes reports of the association's activities and annual meetings. IAML maintains an internet home page and operates an electronic discussion list, IAML-L. The association's archives are housed at the Statens Musikbibliotek, Stockholm. IAML has national branches in 22 countries, which carry out similar work at the national level. Several have their own publications, periodicals or newsletters and web sites.
IAML's first president (1951–5) was Richard S. Hill; Vladimir Fédorov, perhaps the most influential of its founding fathers, was the first secretary. Between 1954 and 1975 Fédorov was also the editor of FAM; for a period he also served as president (1962–5). The other presidents have been Alec Hyatt King (UK), Folke Lindberg (Sweden), André Jurres (Netherlands), John H. Davies (UK), Harald Heckmann (Germany), Barry S. Brook (USA), Brian Redfern (UK), Anders Lönn (Sweden), Maria Calderisi Bryce (Canada), Catherine Massip (France), Don L. Roberts (USA), Veslemöy Heintz (Sweden) and Pamela Thompson (UK). In recognition of their many services, Fédorov and Heckmann were named honorary presidents for life.
At the time of IAML's formation, in the wake of World War II, the restoration of international contacts and provision of access to musical sources and information through international cooperation were its primary objectives, as were standardization in the area of cataloguing and classification of musical documents and improving the training of music librarians. To this end, a number of working commissions were established, a journal was started, and a large-scale project to make inventories of musical sources in print and manuscript before the year 1800, a successor to Robert Eitner's Quellen-Lexikon, was initiated: the Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM). It has since served as a model for three others (‘the four Rs’), all produced by cooperation between national groups and an international centre responsible for collecting and coordinating the national contributions: Répertoire international de littérature musicale (RILM), a computerized abstracting service and bibliography of scholarly writings on music throughout the world. Based at the City University of New York, it issues a printed annual volume, RILM Abstracts, and is available online and on CD-ROM.
The Répertoire International d'Iconographie Musicale (RIdIM) project exists to document visual materials relating to music. RIdIM publishes a newsletter, and since 1984 has sponsored a scholarly yearbook, Imago musicae. The RIdIM/RCMI (Research Center for Musical Iconography) is also located at the City University of New York. Most recently, the Répertoire International de la Presse Musicale (RIPM) has been established to abstract and index the contents of selected periodicals concerned with the music of the 18th to the 20th centuries. Since 1988 it has been published as a book series by UMI Research Press at Ann Arbor. There are international centres at the University of Maryland (USA) and Parma-Colorno (Italy).
Other IAML-assisted series include Documenta musicologica (Kassel, 1951–), which publishes facsimiles of printed and manuscript sources; Catalogus musicus (Kassel, 1963–), which presents the catalogues of library collections and historically important publishers; Code international de catalogage de la musique (Frankfurt, 1957–83, 5 vols.), a major effort to standardize cataloguing of music materials, now obsolete; and the Directory of Music Research Libraries (Kassel, 1967–), a sub-series (series C) of RISM. Individual publications include Guide for Dating Early Published Music (Hackensack, NJ, and Kassel, 1974) and Terminorum musicae index septem linguis redactus (Budapest and Kassel, 1978).
H.-M. Plesske: ‘Geschichte und Funktion der Internationalen Vereiningung der Musikbibliotheken (IVMB)’, Zentralblatt für Bibliothekswesen, lxxxvi (1972), 352–9
M. Geering: ‘Geschichte und Gegenwart der “AIBM”’, Forum Musikbibliothek, 3 (1991), 197–212 [incl. list of conferences, 1949–91]
ANDERS LONN