Letter from the Editor, March 2008
Welcome to the new Grove Music Online.
In March, 2008, after two years of development, Grove Music Online was relaunched as part of Oxford Music Online, a new gateway for online music resources. As editor, I have taken the opportunity of this relaunch to put into place editorial policies that I believe will allow Grove Music Online to develop and grow while maintaining the high standards of the Grove tradition.
First and foremost is a new structure. We now group together, under one search result, all Grove articles on a single subject (e.g. Mozart or Paris). The first article linked to by a search result is now the ‘primary’ Grove Music Online article on the subject, and it is subject to a regular updating and revision programme. Other articles, from specialist dictionaries such as The New Grove Dictionary of Opera and The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, second edition, are now available via a link from this primary article. These articles are static and will not be regularly updated. By singling out one article on each subject as our ‘primary’ online article, we will be able to ensure consistency of the content, while still making other points of view available.
Much of the work for the relaunch of Grove Music Online was devoted to the search functionality, and in addition to general technical improvements we have grounded the new search in authority files and taxonomies developed by the Grove editorial team and tailored to research in music.
Learn more about the editorial work behind the search and the new structure introduced with the March 2008 relaunch of Grove Music Online.
The ability of online resources to link to one another is a mixed blessing; information on the web is of varying quality and stability. We are moving away from general linking to partnerships with organisations that can guarantee their content and stability. I am very pleased that we now have such partnerships with three outstanding subscription resources, all available to mutual subscribers by link from Grove:
RILM abstracts of music literature is a comprehensive international database of bibliography in music. This essential research tool, with over 400,000 entries is now available, via a link from the bibliography section of every Grove article, to all subscribers of both sites.
Classical Music Library, published by Alexander Street Press, is an online database containing thousands of recordings. A link to Classical Music Library is available from the Related Content tab of every Grove article.
Digital Recordings in American Music (DRAM) is a not-for-profit database of recordings of American Music. DRAM is also available through a link from the Related Content tab.
Last but by no means least, our content updating programme resumes with a schedule of three updates yearly. Five major updating projects are underway, all of which will appear in installments over the next few years:
Contemporary composers and performers project, special advisors Keith Potter and Richard Wigmore. This ongoing project will form the main content of our Fall 2008 update.
The Grove Dictionary of American Music, second edition, edited by Charles Hiroshi Garrett. ‘AmeriGrove 2’ will ultimately appear in print in 6 volumes. But the content will be incorporated into Grove Music Online as part of our regular update programme beginning in 2009.
The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, second edition. This project is just getting started. Like AmeriGrove, this project will have a print component as well as feeding updates to Grove Music Online.
Bibliography project. Finally, we are beginning a massive multi-year project to update the bibliography of every article in Grove Music Online.
Laura Macy
Editor in Chief
Grove Dictionaries of Music
March 2008
Experienced Grove Music Online users: please be sure to read our tips page for using the new site.
