RISM Cataloging Guidelines

Welcome to the website of the RISM Cataloging Guidelines, the rules and procedures for describing historical musical sources for the Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM) - International Inventory of Musical Sources.

RISM is an international, non-profit organization that aims to comprehensively document extant musical sources worldwide: manuscripts, printed music editions, writings on music theory, and libretti that are found in libraries, archives, churches, schools, and private collections. RISM was founded in Paris in 1952 and is the largest and only global organization that documents written musical sources. RISM records what exists and where it can be found.

The RISM guidelines on this website represent the most up-to-date version of RISM’s cataloging guidelines and should be consulted by anyone wishing to catalog in accordance with RISM rules. The guidelines are regularly updated to align with developments of our cataloging program, Muscat, and to reflect the needs of our catalogers. Major changes to the guidelines are outlined in the “Latest changes” block below.

RISM first introduced its description standards to the international musicological and library community in the mid-1970s in the course of planning Series A/II for the description of music manuscripts. The first “Checklist” of cataloging fields was published in Fontes Artis Musicae in 1978 and appeared in Fontes in expanded form in 1981 in German, English, and French. After that, the guidelines were circulated to RISM catalogers in connection with the cataloging programs that RISM used: PIKaDo starting in 1990, Kallisto from 2006, and Muscat since 2016. A translation of the RISM guidelines into Spanish appeared in 1996 (José V. González, Valle, Antonio Ezquerro, Nieves Iglesias, C. José Gosálvez, and Joana Crespí: Normas internacionales para la catalogación de fuentes musicales históricas: Serie A/II, Manoscritos musicales, 1600-1800, Madrid: Arco/Libros). This RISM Cataloging Guidelines website supersedes all previous publications of RISM guidelines.

The RISM Cataloging Guidelines website is aimed at RISM contributors who are cataloging musical sources using Muscat, but this website may also serve as a resource to our wider international community of RISM users, musicologists, and librarians.