English Heritage Music Series

Abstract

This case study will describe the processes and challenges of publishing the English Heritage Music Series (EHMS). University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing was approached in early 2020 by researchers with a proposal to take content archived in the Novello Collection of the Royal College of Music in London and create engraved scores for compositions that are out of print and in the public domain. The lack of access and printed engravings meant that a considerable number of these compositions had not been performed in over one hundred years. The U of MN Libraries Publishing Team was challenged to create an appealing digital website that could be continually updated by the researchers, provide copyright expertise on publishing public domain content mixed with openly licensed content, and create a metadata schema appropriate to music publishing and cataloging. The goal of the English Heritage Music Series project is to create reuse, primarily in the form of live performance. EHMS has had impact in both seeding reuse and benefitting from reuse: The Royal College of Music Library notified us that they are systematically adding print copies of the EHMS engravings to their collection, and the Hertfordshire Chorus provided recordings of their performance of our score of Parry’s De Profundis for sharing on the EHMS website.

Accessibility Summary:

In accordance with Title II regulations this content meets all points of exemption as Archived web content and/or Preexisting conventional electronic documents.