Encoding the users:Towards a copy-based assessment of early printed music

The research project DORMEME develops a database that encodes interactions with music books that happened (primarily) after the books left the printshop: bindings, inscriptions, annotations, additions, which are then used to tell the story of who owned, read, and performed from music books printed in the first half of the sixteenth century. Using a copy-based approach to assessing individual interactions, this database sits at the crossroads of music history, bibliography, the history of reading, provenance research, and digital humanities. <br/>This article outlines this copy-based methodology that systematically records individual interactions with surviving music books. Drawing on bibliographic traditions, provenance research, and the history of reading, the project employs a TEI-based XML schema to encode annotations, bindings, inscriptions, and musical modifications. This approach allows for both standardization and flexibility, accommodating the unique features of each copy while enabling broader thematic analysis.<br/>By linking data to established bibliographic resources such as RISM and integrating insights from digital humanities, the project creates a searchable, open-access database. This resource facilitates new research into the social lives of music books, including patterns of ownership, regional dissemination, and performative practices. The article also addresses the conceptual and technical challenges of reconciling bibliographic identities with physical book objects, particularly in the context of partbooks and composite volumes.<br/>In this article we discuss the challenges that come with such an interdisciplinary approach, both from an intellectual as well as a technological perspective, and our proposed solutions. In doing so we hope to contribute to a wider methodological debate around the nature of music book scholarship as well as to provide insight into our data and its supporting structure to encourage future use of both.<br/>