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Grove Music Online now part of the new Oxford Music Online

After two years of development, Grove Music Online has now been relaunched as part of Oxford Music Online , a new gateway for online music resources. With the site now live, I would like to take this opportunity to explain some of the changes, and the larger editorial policies they represent.

First and foremost is a new structure. We now group together, under one search result, all Grove articles on a single subject (e.g. Mozart or Paris). The first article linked to by a search result is now the 'primary' Grove Music Online article on the subject, and it is subject to a regular updating and revision programme. Other articles, from specialist dictionaries such as The New Grove Dictionary of Opera and The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, second edition, are now available via a link from this primary article. These articles are static and are not be regularly updated. By singling out one article on each subject as our 'primary' online article, we will be able to ensure consistency of the content, while still making other points of view available.

Much of the work for the relaunch of Grove Music Online was devoted to the search functionality, and in addition to general technical improvements we have grounded the new search in authority files and taxonomies developed by the Grove editorial team and tailored to research in music. Both browsing and searching can now be limited by a subject classification that we have developed out of the editorial areas from which the dictionary was created. As we go forward, we will continue to refine and develop these categories.

The technical work that went into this relaunch was important and necessary, and I am very happy to see the editorial background work coming to fruition in the improved advanced searching on the site. But I confess that it has been frustrating to me that our updating programme was of necessity put on hold while the new site was 'under construction', and we had no choice but to suspend updating for the duration of development. But though the site has remained static, the editorial work has continued. With the launch we are increasing our number of major updates to three per year, and the content of these updates will draw from several major projects:

Contemporary composers and performers project, special advisors Keith Potter and Richard Wigmore. This ongoing project will form the main content of our Fall 2008 update.

Grove Dictionary of American Music, second edition, edited by Charles Hiroshi Garrett. "AmeriGrove 2" will ultimately appear in print in 6 volumes. But the content will be incorporated into Grove Music Online as part of our regular update programme beginning in 2009.

Grove Dictionary of Early Music. In addition to updating and revision of Grove's early music content, this project, which will also appear in print, will include some 300 new articles on individual works. Updates including material from this project will appear in 2009.

Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, second edition. This project is just getting started. Like AmeriGrove and the Early Music Dictionary, this project will have a print component as well as feeding updates to Grove Music Online.

Bibliography project. We are beginning a massive multi-year project to update the bibliography of every article in Grove Music Online.

Finally, I am very pleased indeed to announce new partnerships, offering links to subscribers to both Grove and the partner site:

RILM abstracts of music literature is a comprehensive international database of bibliography in music. This essential research tool, with over 400,000 entries is now available, via a link from the bibliography section of every Grove article, to all subscribers of both sites.

Digital Recordings in American Music (DRAM) is a not-for-profit database of recordings of American Music. DRAM is also available through a link from the Related Content tab.

NAXOS

COMING SOON - Classical Music Library, published by Alexander Street Press, is an online database containing thousands of recordings. A link to Classical Music Library is available from the Related Content tab of every Grove article.

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