"Köchel & Sons" - a new Wikipedia page for the composers' work catalogues

With Heikki Poroila's kindly permission I publish here his proposal from IAML-L:
You dear colleagues have not supported my suggestion about a new Wikipedia page for the composers' work catalogues. One reason to this reaction might be this existing page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalogues_of_classical_compositions#List_of_catalogues, which might tempt one to think, that fine! we already have the list Heikki Poroila is asking for.

But if you have a closer look at it, the content & construction of the page is far from satisfying. I point out here only the most obvious problems:

(1) The list itself is quite comprehensive, but it still lacks important entries (like Jean Sibelius and other Finnish composers :)

(2) There is a column for code symbols, but the background information for these and their rivals is very scarce;

(3) Authors of the catalogs have their own column, but only a minority contain a link to a Wikipedia page;

(4) The bibliographic information about the publications is mildly speaking crappy (can't be from the pen of a librarian!)

This is why I think that we should do this work much better.

Just a quick draft suggestion:

Column 1: the composer (full name and of course a link to the main page)

Column 2: the code(s) (with links to special pages, if available)

Column 3: the publication with basic bibliographic information

Column 4: a short description of the type of the catalogue (thematic - bibliographic - systematic - chronological etc.)

Column 5: explanations to the potential user of the catalogue about the quality of the catalogue, about it's age and reliability and other user's experiences (maybe also cues like "used in Grove")

Column 6: other useful remarks like "out of print", links to free web catalogs and related pages

- - -
1. Sibelius, Jean

2. Op, JS (Jean Sibelius)

3. Jean Sibelius : Thematisch-bibliographisches Verzeichnis seiner Werke / von Fabian Dahlström. – Wiesbaden : Breitkopf & Härtel, 2003. - 768 p. : ill. – ISBN 3-7651-0333-0

4. Thematic and bibliographic

5. The only authorative and researched Sibelius catalogue available. Prof. Fabian Dahlström is a Sibelius expert and the catalog has been prepared in cooperation with librarians. It is quite well up-to-date and the JS-numbering for works without an opus number have been widely adopted

6. There is a guide for the uniform titles of all Sibelius' works free on-line (http://www.kaapeli.fi/~musakir/republic/Sibelius/Sibelius.pdf). The text contains information in English as well

- - -

I do understand, why libraries want to make lists of their own, but on the other hand I think it is no longer rational. We do have web resources like Wikipedia, which is free for all, easy to comment and keep up-datet and - what I think is not a bad idea at all - easy to access from any work station on line. Maintaining maybe hundreds of lists in hundreds of music libraries sounds so last season for me :)

The working title of this page might be "Köchel & Sons" or something similar. It should be maintained by music librarians, of course. Anybody in favor?

Best wishes

Heikki Poroila
Music Librarian
Helsinki Metropolitan Area Library, Finland

 

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