Ufficio Ricerca Fondi Musicali

The Ufficio Ricerca Fondi Musicali is the music department of Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, Milan National Library, and is hosted by Milan Conservatory.

It was founded in 1965 by Claudio Sartori 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.

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, accessible via a dedicated music search form.

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.

Searches are possible by telephone, mail, e-mail or visiting the office.