Projects
Be-MUSIC
Be-MUSIC - A Plurivocal Acces to Belgian Musical Heritage
The musical instrument collection of the Belgian scientific institutions preserved in RMCA and RMAH-MIM is an exceptionally valuable one, known for its history, diversity, quality, and quantity. The RMCA holds 9110 instruments mainly from Central Africa, but also from theAmericas and Oceania. The MIM holds 11400 instruments from all continents and dating from the 16th century onwards. Fusing bothcollections into one new plurivocal information platform of musical heritage will highlight this outstanding national heritage, augment itsvalorization potential, and guarantee its sustainability. It will profile both FSI’s as a joint Centre of Excellence for the study of musicalinstruments.The information available from both the collections is of a widely diverse nature (metadata, thesauri, photographs, audio material) and isproduced in many formats, in different standards, and in different languages. The project will aggregate this massive amount ofinformation in a modern and highly dynamic search portal, increasing the accessibility to the available sources. The portal will be linked tocrowdsourcing campaigns aimed at collecting additional valuable knowledge on musical instruments and musical traditions. Intellectualand property right will be researched and cleared where needed.