I'm not directly involved with the Rigler-Deutsch Index (RDI), but I'd
like to share what I know.
The libraries participating in RDI agreed that fundamentally the index is
flawed since non-professionals were transcribing what they could read off
photographs of record labels, resulting in numerous errors of various
kinds. Rather than go back and fix these errors, they were able to get a
Mellon grant to do full cataloging for all the holdings from scratch,
getting professionals to actually examine the physical recordings. To
proceed, the alphabet of record labels was divided up among the
participants -- I know my institution (New York Public Library) was
charged with doing record labels S-Z.
But then came along 2008 when the financial world collapsed and soon after
the grant was not renewed. Nevertheless, I believe each of the
constituents is still carrying on cataloging 78s with existing staff. So
while you might be searching WorldCat for RDI entries, you might also want
to search it for regular 78 cataloging as well.
Bob Kosovsky, Ph.D. -- Curator, Rare Books and Manuscripts,
Music Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
blog: http://www.nypl.org/blog/author/44 Twitter: @kos2
Listowner: OPERA-L ; SMT-TALK ; SMT-ANNOUNCE ; SoundForge-users
--- My opinions do not necessarily represent those of my institutions ---
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