The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has designated Oct. 27 as World Day for Audiovisual Heritage to raise awareness on the importance of preserving, collecting, and revitalizing historic music materials. In response to this call, the Taiwan Music Institute recruited national and private music museums to jointly launch the Taiwan Music Organizations' Strategic Alliance (TMOSA, 臺灣音樂策略聯盟) on Oct. 25.
Deputy Minister of Culture Hsiao Tsung-huang (蕭宗煌) stated that Minister of Culture Cheng Li-chiun hopes to create an integrated MLA (museums, libraries, and archives) system to pool together precious music collections that are currently scattered across the nation, and digitize them for the Taiwan Cultural Memory Bank project. This would make all the music materials and collections more easily accessible for researchers, educators, and the general public, he explained.
TMOSA's establishment, which falls under the framework of the Executive Yuan's "Reconstruction of Taiwan Music History 2.0," will recruit more members to join the alliance and incorporate new resources to work together to promote Taiwan music on the international stage.
Chen Chi-ming (陳濟民), director of the National Center for Traditional Arts (NCFTA), explained that in preparation for establishing the alliance, NCFTA conducted a nation-wide survey of music museums and related databases in Taiwan. The purpose of the review was to understand each individual museum, chronicle their current collections, and find out their needs in moving forward:
In celebration of World Day for Audiovisual Heritage, the Taiwan Music Institute also held a special forum on Oct. 25. Barbara Mackenzie — chair of Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM) and former chair of the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres (IAML) — gave a special lecture on the collaborative content and cooperative blueprint of the RILM and IAML communities. The forum aspires to foster stronger connections between music institutions in Taiwan and their foreign counterparts, strengthen the nation’s systematic integration of music resources, and present Taiwan's music heritage to the world.