Resources

For researchers, teachers, and students

Musical Instrument Museums Online (MIMO)

MIMO is the world’s largest freely accessible database for information on musical instruments held in public collections. MINIM-UK aggregates a subset of its data, where licensing terms allow, to the MIMO database. MIMO also aggregates information to Europeana Music, which brings together a selection of music-related collections from Europe’s audio-visual archives, libraries, archives and museums.

For museum professionals

CIMCIM

CIMCIM is the acronym for Comité international pour les musées et collections d’instruments et de musique (International Committee for Museums and Collections of Instruments and Music). CIMCIM is one of 31 international committees of ICOM, the International Council of Museums, and was established in 1960. CIMCIM aims to promote high professional standards in the use and conservation of musical instruments in museums and collections.

Musical Instruments Resource Network (MIRN)

MIRN promotes understanding of issues surrounding the care and display of musical instruments and collections within the United Kingdom. It disseminates information in accord with current best practice and advocates for the wide accessibility of public collections.

Cataloguing and Digitisation Standards

MINIM-UK developed a set of Standards for Cataloguing of Instruments, to be used by the project’s cataloguers during fieldwork. The standards provide a framework for cataloguing key information about musical instruments. The document also includes information about basic data structures for object records in the MINIM-UK database.

The MIMO Vocabulary provides a multi-lingual thesaurus for the classification of musical instruments.

Project cataloguers followed the?MIMO Digitisation Standard wherever practical, when undertaking project photography. Museums are encouraged to use these standards for the photography of their own musical instruments, as they provide a framework for preferred positions and views of the photographed subject.