Publication Date:
2022
Description:
Medium of performance—instruments, voices, and devices—is a frequent starting point in library users’ search for music resources. However, content and encoding standards for library cataloging have not been developed in a way that enables clear and consistent recording of medium of performance information. Consequently, unless specially configured, library discovery systems do not display medium of performance or provide this access point. Despite efforts to address this issue in the past decade in RDA, MARC, and the linked data environment, medium of performance information continues to be imprecise, dispersed across multiple fields or properties, and implied in other data elements. This article proposes revised definitions for “part,” “medium,” “performer,” and “ensemble,” along with a linked data model, the Ontology for Voice, Instruments, and Ensembles (OnVIE), that captures precise and complete medium of performance data reflecting music compositional practices, performance practices, and publishing conventions. The result is an independent medium of performance framework for recording searchable and machine-actionable metadata that can be hooked on to established library metadata ontologies and is widely applicable to printed and recorded classical, popular, jazz, and folk music. The clarity, simplicity, and extensibility of this model enable machine parsing so that the data can be searched, filtered, sorted, and displayed in multiple, creative ways.
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