From the 7th to 8th May 2026, the Academy of Sciences and Literature | Mainz (ADWL) hosted an international musicology workshop focusing on the interoperability of musicological data and the exchange of knowledge regarding the latest developments in AI applications in this field. The workshop brought together for the first time members of musica* – Consortium en musicologie numérique from the French digital humanities infrastructure project Huma-Num and musicologists from NFDI4Culture. They were joined by experts from the RISM Digital Centre of the Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM), based at the Swiss National Library in Basel, and from the newly founded Norwegian MishMash Centre for AI and Creativity, a consortium of Norwegian research institutions focusing on use cases for the application of artificial intelligence in the cultural sector. The NFDI4Culture consortium was represented by musicologists, developers and coordinators from the Specialized Information Service (FID) for musicology (musiconn) at the Saxon State and University Library (SLUB) in Dresden, the Centre for Digital Music Documentation (CDMD) and the NFDI4Culture team based at the ADWL.

The lunch-to-lunch workshop was purposely limited to a small group in order to efficiently lay the foundations for future collaboration, identify areas of overlap between the consortia, and outline the next steps for cooperation. The preliminary results include the following measures:

• Making services, guidelines and software of the partner projects visible on the NFDI4Culture Portal
• Integrating data bases from the NFDI4Culture consortium into the musicological data search engine musicaSearch of Huma-Num
• Strengthening contacts and exploring potential links between the French digital archive of musical performances Dezède, the German database of musical events musiconn.performance and the International Inventory of Musical Sources RISM

In addition, possibilities for aligning standardised data and IDs across different musicological datasets, the use of artificial intelligence in linking knowledge graphs, and the integration of musical instrument vocabularies were discussed.

Altogether, the workshop contributed to a productive exchange and a deeper mutual understanding of the projects, and laid the foundation for further cooperation as a Special Interest Group Linked Metadata and Interoperability in Musicology.

 

Participants:

Augustin Braud (Université de Tours/musica* – Consortium en musicologie numérique)
Olivier Lartillot (Universitetet I Oslo/MishMash Centre for AI and Creativity)
Laurent Pugin (Swiss National Library/RISM Digital Centre)
Kristina Richts-Matthaei (CDMD/NFDI4Culture), Torsten Schrade (ADWL/NFDI4Culture), Alexandra Büttner (ADWL/NFDI4Culture), Linnaea Söhn (ADWL/NFDI4Culture)
Barbara Wiermann (SLUB Dresden/musiconn/NFDI4Culture), Martha Stellmacher (SLUB Dresden/NFDI4Culture), Katharina Laux (SLUB Dresden/musiconn)