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Just to mention that the MIMO (Musical Instruments Museums On-line) website has been upgraded and can be seen at:

 

http://www.mimo-international.com/index.html

 

From the announcement:

 

It is with great pleasure that we are able to announce the launch of a significantly updated and improved version of the MIMO website. The new site will go live on 28th March, 2014. This has been made possible by contributions from, five of the original project partners (The University of Edinburgh, Cité de la musique, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Muziekinstrumentenmuseum, Association "Amici del Museo degli Strumenti Musicali,").

The site is being launched in beta mode and will initially only be in English and French, however, all six of the original partners' languages will be added over the next few months. We invite you to view and test the site and would be grateful for any feedback you can offer. Please respond via the Contact link. Further improvements will be added later in the year as a result of a generous contribution made by CIMCIM.

Other positive news is that, since the announcement at last year's CIMCIM conference in Oxford of the two African collections that were about to join, we have added two more museums to the partnership - the Museu de la Música in Barcelona and the Royal College of Music in London. We are also very close to confirming the addition of a major collection in Asia, details of which we hope to announce shortly. In addition to new content in MIMO, this will mean that additional languages will be incorporated into the search functionality.

 

Not too much in concertina entries yet, but maybe some people are unaware of. To search, select "Search the Collections" on the page mentioned. Then put terms in the search box and press go. I got 37 hits for "concertina".

 

If you then click on the magnifying glass for any entry, you get to see all the details and an image (if available). Click on the image thumbnail for a bigger version.You can go back to the search page, or click "next" or "previous" to tab through the hits. There's more, but that should get you started.

 

Here's an image from MIMO of an instrument at Edinburgh:

 

0032719c.jpg

 

As I say, early days for MIMO yet, but a resource for the future in the making, and might already help locate something of interest.

 

Terry

Edited by Terry McGee
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OK, try again: http://www.mimo-international.com/index.html (Also corrected above. Not actually sure what happened there!)

 

No internal pictures. Museum staff are very loath to go inside things, or let other people go inside things. One of the difficult philosophical issues museums and their clients face.

 

The argument goes something like this. We want to preserve this thing indefinitely, for the benefit of posterity. Even if we let people handle it occasionally, over an infinity of time, it will suffer infinite wear and tear. Clearly the only acceptable amount of access is zero. Hmmm, if we grant zero access, we might as well not preserve it at all. Oh dear.....

 

While that sets out the extreme case, you can see it is not easy to set a less extreme set of guidelines.

 

Terry

Edited by Terry McGee
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Museum staff are very loath to go inside things, or let other people go inside things. One of the difficult philosophical issues museums and their clients face.

 

The Horniman Museum have let me look inside one of theirs that I had a particular interest in, though it had to go "for conservation" again afterwards.

 

But opening up fragile old instruments can be fraught and damage can ensue, even if you're extremely careful - I've at least one, extremely early, concertina in my own collection that I'd be very reluctant to try and open, because its frail (literally "moth-eaten"!) original bellows would quite-likely disintegrate in the process... :blink:

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Yes, I spent a few days at the Horniman in 2002, and was given very good access to the items I was interested in. But you have to "earn" your access these days - you need to show that you are aware of the rules, eg avoiding the use of metal measuring tools where possible, wearing gloves, keep the item on cushions, and so on. And you need to establish that you really need to look inside, and not just out of curiosity. And that really means establishing a reputation. Not like the old days where having just met the curator, he shoots out to lunch having asked you to pull the door after you when you leave!

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