[Smt-talk] Jonathan Kramer's "The Time of Music"

[Steve Haflich]

Charles J. Smith <cjsmith at buffalo.edu> wrote:

   One obvious and relatively inexpensive solution would be the Google
   Books or Digital Dissertations approach, which would store scans of
   out of print books as PDFs online somewhere, for free downloading (or
   perhaps with just a nominal charge). Some libraries have already made
   a good start in making some of their holdings available, but to my
   knowledge there's no central repository for music or music theory,
   listing what's available where yet. The only recourse is still to try
   a search on Google, and then deal with its many warts and
   frustrations.

IMSLP (imslp.org) certainly qualifies as a "central repository" for
out-of-copyright music scores.  It's the first place I go when I need to
refer to a score not in my collection, whether for study or to check a
performance detail.  Its collection has grown massive in recent years.

It idly occurs to me that IMSLP would also be well-adapted to taking on
the tiny additional load of serving scans of out-of-copyright theory
materials, etc.  They already deal successfully with the download issues
for the sometimes-different copyright status of works when downloaded to
different countries.  All they need is a contributed scan of the work.
   
   The problem with rebirthing any book is always going to be
   determining who owns the rights, and then getting permission.

Indeed, this is the problem with anything still under copyright.  It is
possible for the owner of copyright to grant permission to redistribute,
but there is no gain (other than good will) and sometimes considerable
bother for a commercial entity to do this.

There are also any number of dissertations known to me (and undoubtedly
many more unknown) to which I would love to have access online.

I dream that someone on this list, perhaps someone holding office in
SMT, might be moved to approach IMSLP.

-- 
Steven M. Haflich <smh at franz.com>
musicologically unaffiliated