Germany, Leipzig, July 22 – July 27, 2018
The Congress was held at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy” in Leipzig. Participants were experts from all over the world, including overseas, and amounted to about 400 in total.
The Czech Republic has been a long-standing member of this association through the National Library, the National Museum and several other institutions.
The National Museum took part in the congress this year: Filip Šír presented his contribution to the International Bibliography of Discographies project, which is the main duty of his role as chairman of the IASA Discography Committee.
One of the main findings from the congress is that cataloguing and acquiring metadata is still a big concern for all involved: while work is still ongoing on the standardization of special musical descriptive elements (musical ensembles etc.), unfortunately it is not sufficiently coordinated and efforts are underway in several countries to solve the same issues. The issue of audio documents has always been somewhat overlooked in this Association – the focus is always primarily on documentary and printed sources. Now, however, there is a growing awareness of the need to incorporate these documents – as a natural remit of musical institutions – into the concept of accessibility and protection, and there was much talk about the need for future cooperation with IASA, which specializes in these issues.
The next Congress will take place in Krakow, Poland.
A conference in Prague is scheduled for 2020. Part of the culmination of the negotiations was the first steps in planning of the 2020 program, in which we would also like to participate.
The whole program is available here.
