The Ufficio Ricerca Fondi Musicali is the music department of Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, Milan National Library.
It was founded in 1965 for the research of Claudio Sartori and Mariangela Donà,
and holds the national catalogue of music manuscript and printed scores to 1900:
more than 300.000 titlecards, mostly not accessible through other repertoirs.
There are also smaller catalogues: a catalogue of correspondance of musicians, a catalogue of music literature and the original cards of
Claudio Sartori's catalogue of Italian librettos printed before 1800.
Since 1978 the Office is hosted by Milan Conservatory Library.
The catalogue of printed scores has been completely transferred to the central database SBN Musica and now is part of the national libary service SBN.
The catalogue of music manuscripts has been digitized and is available through the Internet.
The Office collaborates with the Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico for the maintenance
music materials within SBN, for the development of standard formats for musica and of the cataloguing rules for music, and for the directory of
Italian music libraries.
At the international level it collaborates with IAML (International Association of Music Libraries)
for the management of Unimarc codes for music materials, with RILM
(Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale), hosting its national branch, and with
RISM (Répertoire International des Sources Musicales) for music manuscripts
cataloguing and the management of international music library siglas.
This website continues in part the Italian Music Homepage, the virtual library of music, http://www.cilea.it/music,
now no more active, edited 1995-2007 by Massimo Gentili-Tedeschi.
Please send bugs, corrections, requests to Massimo Gentili-Tedeschi.
It is possible to search by telephone, mail, email or on site.
Italian and foreign users are admitted.
Books of the Braidense library with call mark URFM.A.-E. are in the holdings of the office and may be asked through the Conservatory library.
Dictionaries and repertoirs are freely accessible.
Card catalogues may be consulted with the assistance of the staff of the Office or of the Conservatory library.
Electronic resources of the Mediateca are open access with the dedicated PC's.