Music scholars and readers with an affinity for historic musical instruments may be especially interested in Musical Instrument Museums Online (MIMO): "the world's largest freely accessible database for information on musical instruments held in public collections." This resource began in 2009 as a consortium between a number of European musical instrument museums and is now working on expanding its scope to include digitized instruments in publicly held collections around the world. At the time of this writing, visitors to MIMO will find records of more than 100,000 instruments in its database with search information available in multiple languages in addition to English. Readers may search MIMO by keyword or browse the database by instrument family, museum, or instrument-maker. The available information for individual instruments vary, but their records may include such details as multiple photos, audio clips, and written descriptions (which may not always be in English), as well as links to catalog records on other websites if applicable. For museums interested in joining the project, MIMO also provides detailed guidelines and standards on how to photograph and catalog their collections.
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