Deciphering Encoded Music:  Increasing Access to Open Data Resources

1. Abstract

This panel brings together developers of digital music projects to articulate a vision for the future of open data with regard to the needs and desires of researchers in music studies. How can individual projects contribute to a network of open data sources? What are the obstacles ahead and how can they be overcome? Panel participants will approach these questions from various angles, through discussion of topics that include: metasearch capabilities to retrieve data from multiple repositories of encoded music; increasing data usability by providing multiple access points; developing a critical pedagogy that challenges the social structures underlying standardized encoding schemes; allowing encoded music annotation across repositories and formats; and the development of minimal computing models to enhance possibilities for discoverability and display of individual corpora for analysis.