Oxford Music Online (review)

TL;DR: The Oxford Music Online-hereafter OMO (OMOMO) project as discussed by the authors is an attempt by Oxford University Press's attempt to bring several of its music titles together on one search platform.

Abstract: Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, 2008-. http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com. (Accessed March 2009). [Requires a Web browser and an Internet connection. Some music examples require the Scorch plug-in from http://sibelius.com]. Online version of (i) The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (incorporating material from The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, 2d edition; The New Grove Dictionary of Opera (1992), and The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2d edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell, 2001); (ii) The Encyclopedia of Popular Music, 4th edition, edited by Colin Larkin (2006-); (iii) The Oxford Dictionary of Music, 2d edition, revised, edited by Michael Kennedy (2006); and (iv) The Oxford Companion to Music, edited by Alison Latham (2002). [New Grove Dictionary updated approximately every six months. Update schedule of Encyclopedia of Popular Music unknown. Various pricing packages for individuals, libraries, schools, and other organizations.] The world of music digital resources continues to develop in new and exciting ways, with a growing consensus on functionality requirements, and the ability of different electronic products to "talk" to each other, being probably the most visible benefits of recent times. Oxford Music Online-hereafter OMO-launched in March 2008 as Oxford University Press's attempt to bring several of its music titles together on one search platform. At this time, many music librarians (especially in academic libraries) probably remain most interested in the presence of the various "Grove" dictionary titles on that platform, and it is clear that OMO is, at this time, very much a work in progress, something of a "Grove plus others" resource. The recent arrival of the online version of Colin Larkin's Encyclopedia of Popular Music [EPM], two years after the print version, means that there are now at least two large-scale (to call them "multivolume" seems rather anachronistic) reference sources in OMO, rather than just one. Unfortunately, a current dispute involving MUZE, which owns and licenses the EPM content, may lead to Oxford only being able to sell a static version of EPM in future, without further updates and on a nonsubscription basis; something that would severely reduce its usefulness. In the meantime, Oxford is working on adding Richard Taruskin's six-volume Oxford History of Western Music, published in print in 2005, to the site. This was originally announced for Fall 2008, but difficulties in putting a narrative-format, rather than dictionaryformat, text onto the OMO platform are being given as the reason for the delay. The second edition of the New Grove Dictionary of American Music will also appear in OMO in due course, though at this time no date of publication has been announced (for more information, see http://sitemaker .umich.edu/amerigrove/home). There was some dismay within the music library community when the idea of subsuming Grove into OMO, and thus discontinuing the almost seven-year-old www.grovemusic.com site, was first proposed in 2007. Librarians seemed concerned that taking the name "Grove" out of the site name would be a problem for patrons, and there was a flurry of concerned e-mails on MLA-L late in 2007, resulting in Oxford's decision to keep www.grovemusic.com active as a URL through July 2008 to enable adequate time for the transition (in fact, www.grovemusic.com still appears to work). Although the www.grovemusic.com site, launched in 2001 by Macmillan, had not been without its problems, there seemed to be a feeling that Oxford, which took over the ownership, management and development of Grove products in February 2003, was slowly getting to grips with these, and was improving things. Macmillan, which had been the publisher of Grove since its first edition of 1879-89, was not, frankly, experienced in electronic publishing, and those with reasonably long memories may recall the problems that quickly arose when the original database first went live. …