Introduction

• What is MIMO?
  - Background
  - What Happens Next?
• Getting Digital Content Online - The Harvesting Process
• Digitisation
• How Can Other Museums Add Their Collections? - Content Checklist
• Frequently Asked Questions
  

Technical and Legal Introduction

• Digitisation
• Harvesting Content
• Vocabulary and Thesaurus
• MIMO DB
• Legal Aspects
  

Technical Guidelines - Outcomes from the MIMO Project

• The MIMO Digitisation Standard
• Specifications for the Common Data Model for the Description of Musical Instruments
• Metadata Mapping and OAI-PMH Implementation Guidelines

Vocabulary and Thesaurus

A critical element of the MIMO Project was the work done on the classification and thesaurus, the tools which allow users to search the database.

Within the musical community, the standard most widely used classification scheme for musical instruments is the one developed by Erich Moritz von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs in 1914. This identifies instruments through a numbering system, i.e. equivalent of a library classification for books.  The revised version of the Hornbostel Sachs scheme, published by Jeremy Montagu in 2009 just before the launch of the project, was adopted as the base on which the MIMO model would be adapted.
In addition to further modifying the Montagu version, we enhanced it through the inclusion of a new section that covers electronic instruments, a category which obviously didn’t exist at the time the system was originally devised. The MIMO Revision of the Hornbostel-Sachs Classification of Musical Instruments is now publicly available.

Alongside this, and of perhaps greater importance to the general user, was the development of a keyword search through which it is possible to search by general and specific instrument names, as commonly used by non specialists. The keyword search works in the six languages of the MIMO partners - English, French, German, Italian. Dutch and Swedish.

A common list of all the musical instruments makers linked to the museums' items has also been built, with their alternative names and the references used to list them.

To facilitate this, a web tool for the management, editing and translation of the MIMO vocabularies was developed by the Cité de la musique, in Paris. This was designed by adapting a commercial product (Idesia: a thesaurus management product) to MIMO’s specific needs. Where a keyword can be matched with a Hornbostel Sachs number, the tool simultaneously manages the Hornbostel & Sachs classification, the dictionary of musical instrument keywords and the links between them. It also allows each museum to make an online translation of instruments’ keywords into its own language.