First music conference at the BnL was a complete success Journée d’études du Cedom

The Cedom (Centre d'études et de documentation musicales) organised the first edition of the Journée d’études du Cedom at the National Library on 20 March 2023, a specialist music conference with international experts from the German-speaking world, which will take place every two years in future.

The aim of the conference is to discuss library science and archival issues with experts. This is an initiative of the National Library, which takes place within the framework of the vision 2020-2030 and concerns the development of the Cedom into a national archive of composers. In fact, the archival collections of composers and communities are collected, managed and culturally and scientifically processed at the National Library.

The conference began with an opening speech by the director Claude D. Conter and the head of the Cedom Françoise Molitor. The latter presented the tasks of the music department and, in particular, outlined the ideas for the development and indexing of the composers’ archives from Luxembourg.

Afterwards, four different experts presented the current approaches to indexing composers’ archives in the respective institutions in Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

The conference focused on questions concerning the cataloguing of composers’ fonds, international norms and standards in the field of cataloguing and inventory, data format, library or archive systems.

The participants included

• Christa Traunsteiner, deputy head of the music collection of the Austrian National Library;
• Angelika Salge, lic. phil., Head of the Music Department of the Zurich Central Library;
• Ruprecht Langer, Head of the German Music Archive of the German National Library
• Dr. Reiner Nägele, Head of the Music Department of the Bavarian State Library
• Claude D. Conter, Director of the National Library of Luxembourg,
• Françoise Molitor, Head of the Music Collections of the Cedom as well as 7 other staff members from various departments of the National Library of Luxembourg.

At the end of the music conference, Marlène Duhr, staff member of the Cedom, guided the guests through the current exhibition curated by her: Johny Fritz - Luxemburger Komponist, Musiker und Sammler, which can be visited until 22.04.2023.

Overall, the first study day of the Centre d'études et de documentation musicales of the National Library was a great success. The meeting provided an excellent opportunity for the staff of the Cedom, the IT  Department and the Metadata Department to exchange ideas with experts from German-speaking countries, to gather ideas and to identify new, innovative work processes.