Building a Truly Inclusive European Music Observatory: OpenMusE at the IAML2025

An invitation to music librarians and IAML members!

Across Europe, music libraries are under pressure: greater expectations for digital services, growing metadata burdens, and increasingly fragmented infrastructure. At the same time, vital parts of our musical heritage—especially regional or minority repertoires—remain hidden from search, discovery, and policy.

Our partners from REPREX are at IAML2025 in Salzburg on 7 or 8th July 2025. The presentation takes place in the session of Music Libraries of Tomorrow: Reaching out to Wider Audiences at the Mozarteum University E.001 HS Thomas Bernhard room on 7 July 2025, 16:00–17:30. The day after REPREX participates in the Gallery for the poster session. Not present at IAML2025? Here you can download the poster and the presentation.

The OpenMusE project was initiated, because we believe that in the music ecosystem, data centralisation always fails, and a new kind of cooperation is needed—one that respects local control while enabling international reuse. Our Slovak pilot, the SKCMDb, connects libraries, music centres, rights organisations, and platforms through a shared metadata backbone based on open ontologies. Built as a national data sharing space, it enables coordinated cataloguing and discovery across public and private systems—from streaming services and printed scores to CD loans and digital archives.

But we also know that cultural and music policy is not only national. It is often regional, local, or community-based. That’s why we follow the principle of subsidiarity: letting decisions and innovation happen at the lowest competent level, close to the collections and communities themselves. Our Finno-Ugric Data Sharing Space, including the LīvMDb (Livonian Music Database), shows how even the smallest communities—without formal cultural infrastructure—can take part in high-quality metadata production and digital discovery. We provide the tools and models to empower local custodians, in their language, on their terms, and without the need for large institutional support.

Please check out the demo version of the Finno-Ugric Dataspace or read the long-form project description.

Now we invite IAML members—national libraries, regional centres, municipal collections, and independent music librarians—to join us in building a federated, decentralised European Music Observatory. One that reflects Europe’s diversity. One that reduces data curation costs and improves visibility. One that connects music libraries with the open data and open science infrastructures already transforming other sectors. Our platform is open-source, built on FAIR principles and the European Interoperability Framework. We use tools like Wikibase, Blazegraph, Sampo-UI, and R—packaged to work for libraries with limited technical capacity. If you care about interoperability, cultural equity, and the future of library relevance in the streaming era—this is your moment to get involved. Let’s ensure music libraries remain vital entry points to Europe’s rich and evolving cultural soundscape.

Get a sneak peak here!

Article by: Daniel Antal, REPREX.