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10000 files celebatory thread

Posted: Fri Jul 20, 2007 1:38 am
by imslp
After only a year and a half, IMSLP now has more than 10000 files! I think this warrants certain celebration :)

Speaking of celebration, apparently Beethoven rose from the dead and wrote me a gratitude song. :D While I'm very happy that Beethoven esteems me so highly, I believe that IMSLP is very much a group effort; I myself would have been able to do very little. In fact, as some people may have noticed, I've not contributed much to the wiki as of late, but rather focusing on server maintenance and e-mail answering, partly because of current time issues (which should be more relaxed soon), but also because IMSLP is progressing at such a speed that I can only do a part of the work.

Hence, I would like to spread the gratitude and celebrate this occasion with all IMSLP contributors! I would also like to personally thank all IMSLP contributors for their part in making IMSLP what it is right now: THE biggest free music score library on the internet. :)

As a gift, I will post the MERLOT review of IMSLP in a few hours. Even though the MERLOT guys seem to be rather busy and thus the review is as of yet not publicly available on their site, I do have a link to a copy of the review.

Also, the Project Gutenberg Consortia Center has e-mailed asking for permission to include IMSLP in their links, both for their own site and two affiliated sites, which I of course consented to. Let us hope this will lead to more cooperation between IMSLP and Project Gutenberg!

Again, congratulations everyone! :)

P.S. Post whatever comes to your mind in this thread ;)

Posted: Fri Jul 20, 2007 3:46 am
by emeraldimp
Hurrah! And congrats from me, too!

And, very seriously, thank you very very much for the work you've done. You're not the first or only one to have the idea, but you made it work and made it grow, and neither of those is an easy thing. That you needed assistance to do it doesn't detract from what you've done; rather, it highlights it, since if you could do it all by yourself, it probably wouldn't be much of a site.

Thank you for your work, for your dedication and determination, and for giving me something worthwhile to do while avoiding work... ;-)

May our collection continue to grow, becoming an ever richer resource for the world! May our membership be faithful and remember that, even when we disagree on the details, we still agree on the destination. And may the hairs on Feldmahler's toes never fall out! (er... sorry, wrong celebration...)

*can't wait to see the Merlot review*

Posted: Fri Jul 20, 2007 7:38 am
by imslp
Hahaha.... thank you Emeraldimp! ;) And thank you for the work you've done on IMSLP :)

And here is the yet unposted MERLOT review: http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewCompos ... ?id=244573

Posted: Fri Jul 20, 2007 12:19 pm
by jujimufu
Yup, congrats to everyone! :D

I guess that since the average 1,000 scores/two weeks rate of growth has been stable for the past 2 months (almost), it will only continue to increase in the next months :) But none of this would have happened if Feldmahler didn't.

I still remember back in December when it would take IMSLP two months to get an extra 1,000 submissions, while now we get 1,000 every two weeks. We have managed to quadruple the rate of growth of IMSLP in 6 months :O

I find contributing to IMSLP to be so much fun. I read about new composers, I see pieces from all kinds of eras, I find weird names such as Bronsart von Schellendorff (whose first name is just.. Hans...), read about each publisher etc. :D

It's actually a win-win-win-win situation, since I contribute to the greatest online public domain music score library, I can search for hard-to-find scores, I can work on my English writing by translating the site into Greek, and I can upload my own works :P

Congrats to everyone again, and a big Bravo to Feldmahler for never giving up on this project since the beginning. If you hadn't stayed, we wouldn't have either :P

Take care everybody! And keep contributing!


---
EDIT:

Btw, I just read the MERLOT review.

OMG, how long before was it written?!

" [...]containing over 4,000 public domain musical scores[...]"

that was months ago! :D

The good thing is that IMSLP has a rating of almost pure 5 stars.

And like, "Concerns: It might be good to provide a "Home" link on internal site pages." -- have they never been to a wiki before? :|

But I do agree with them when they say "It will only become better and better over time."

Anyway, it's always good to have a good review like that :P

Posted: Fri Jul 20, 2007 4:27 pm
by CameronMB
Hi there. While I'm relatively new here (I've really only known the site for a couple of months), I have already fallen in love with the site and recommended it to at least a dozen people. Being a piano teacher, the most useful resource here has been the ever-growing mountain of awesome piano music, especially from prolific but largely neglected composers like Heller, Kirchner, and Fibich. While I don't have too much music to contribute (mostly stuff that's already on the site or not in the public domain), I will do my best to contribute by adding section listings, and so forth.

By the way, just one small suggestion: the "random page" feature is very fun, but it would be cool if, somehow, there was a way to pop into just a random piano piece. Perhaps a whole page of "random" links - random piano piece, random symphony, etc. - might be fun if that were somehow possible.

One other small suggestion: a page which lists all the solo piano music (whether sonatas or other piano pieces) organized alphabetically by composer, and then by opus number under each composer, would be amazingly useful not only to me but, I suspect, many others. Unfortunately I'm still essentially a Wiki novice, or I would be happy to do it myself. If someone has the courage to attempt such a thing, or if someone could let me know exactly how to go about doing that (I have time to attempt such a project) I would be greatly appreciative.

Thanks a lot for the wonderful site, and thanks to all the contributors. Keep up the good work!

Posted: Fri Jul 20, 2007 11:52 pm
by matthew
Fantastic work everyone!! The song was a great idea whoever wrote it. Does anyone know if this acually the largest free score library online? Or does that title still belong to some other place (for the moment!)

Thank you to everyone who has helped make this site avalible for all us enthusiastic amateur musicians. Here's to the next 10,000 (and parts for all beethovens symphonies :wink:)

Posted: Sat Jul 21, 2007 5:55 am
by imslp
CameronMB wrote:By the way, just one small suggestion: the "random page" feature is very fun, but it would be cool if, somehow, there was a way to pop into just a random piano piece. Perhaps a whole page of "random" links - random piano piece, random symphony, etc. - might be fun if that were somehow possible.
Unfortunately this is quite hard :/ Possible, though, but probably not at the moment (time issue).
One other small suggestion: a page which lists all the solo piano music (whether sonatas or other piano pieces) organized alphabetically by composer, and then by opus number under each composer, would be amazingly useful not only to me but, I suspect, many others. Unfortunately I'm still essentially a Wiki novice, or I would be happy to do it myself. If someone has the courage to attempt such a thing, or if someone could let me know exactly how to go about doing that (I have time to attempt such a project) I would be greatly appreciative.
This is again possible but not easy, and it will also be rather server consuming. It is fine for only one category, but the server would struggle a bit if every category was done that way (it would essentially double the number of categories). This will also have to be done from the code side, which means that normal people won't be able to do this :/ Unless you go about it the hard way (manually listing the pages), which is something I don't recommend because it is very hard to make and hard to maintain. I'd much prefer code-based listing: I'll think about this, and maybe implement it in the near future :)
Thanks a lot for the wonderful site, and thanks to all the contributors. Keep up the good work!
Your welcome :)
antastic work everyone!! The song was a great idea whoever wrote it. Does anyone know if this acually the largest free score library online? Or does that title still belong to some other place (for the moment!)
To the best of my knowledge, IMSLP indeed is :) And I have trouble imagining another library with more than 10000 scores being hidden from us for so long...

Posted: Sat Jul 21, 2007 10:13 pm
by Carolus
Three cheers are definitely in order! Congrats to all at IMSLP, with a special bow to our founder, Feldmahler, for a most impressive site!

Posted: Sun Jul 22, 2007 10:27 am
by Peter
The moment Feldmahler got the idea that impeted this website, history changed. It was something many people dreamed of, but no one ever had the initiative and unstoppable energy that made this project succesful.

But I think we should not forget to thank Carolus. His unique inside knowledge of the publishing industry and the maze of the copyright laws, and his hard labor to ensure IMSLP's content is public domain, has become an essential part of our project. Without Carolus, IMSLP maybe wouldn't exist anymore.

Thank you!

Posted: Sun Jul 22, 2007 3:47 pm
by emeraldimp
Peter wrote:But I think we should not forget to thank Carolus. His unique inside knowledge of the publishing industry and the maze of the copyright laws, and his hard labor to ensure IMSLP's content is public domain, has become an essential part of our project. Without Carolus, IMSLP maybe wouldn't exist anymore.

Thank you!
Indeed! Carolus, you have always been quick to respond to any copyright questions we've had, even when they required considerable research. You've never (to my knowledge) been upset by the demands IMSLP has put on you and always followed through. Thank you!

Posted: Sun Jul 22, 2007 5:25 pm
by daphnis
Yes I second what everyone else has said. Profound thanks to both Feldmahler and Carolus for the current and future work! I'm certainly very proud to be a contributing member to such a great organization, if just in a small way.

Posted: Sun Jul 22, 2007 9:41 pm
by kdkeller
Hello everyone,
yeah, I'm proud to be a member of this voluntary community. Every single edit comes from the heart (after looking up the copyrights, of course, Carolus :wink: ).

Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2007 8:52 pm
by bobnotts
Congratulations, contributors to IMSLP! I don't contribute (yet!) but when I saw this thread, I remembered how I stumbled across the IMSLP probably about a year ago. "Collect together all public domain sheet music... ever? They must be mad," I thought. And yet, the site has come so far in such a short space of time!

Congratulations again, especially to those who spend the most time editing the wiki and the tireless scanners but also to those who have only posted 1 or 2 scores - they all count! And high praise to Feldmahler for his insight and dedication.

Rob

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 11:48 am
by Josef
The ancient greeks' word for 10.000 (murioi) can mean countless as well. May this go on to the point of no return. Congratulations!

Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 3:19 pm
by goombaruskirusky
more shostakovich