The aim of the Sergei Rachmaninoff International Database (SRIDB) is to catalogue every document and artefact in the world that is directly connected to the work and life of Sergei

Rachmaninoff in an electronically accessible database. This is done through state of the art museum database software.

 

To this end a cataloguing method has been developed, based upon principals used in the Van Gogh Museum, specifically aimed at the great variety of material that form the basis in the SRIDB.

 

All materials will be uniformly catalogued as separate museum objects according to International museum standards: each single artefact will receive a unique SRIDB catalogue number (leading to the number in their own local archive) so they can always be identified and located worldwide, materials can also be cross-linked through categories: a letter can be linked to a cheque, a cheque to a chair, a chair to a photo etc. and will be interlinked and photographed in high resolution, if needed/possible.

 

Important monographs and reminiscences about Sergei Rachmaninoff will likewise be catalogued so as to enable crosslinks between physical material and testimonies of contemporaries. Information on the physical location of the materials, wherever in the world, will also be included.

 

The SRIDB will start from the Rachmaninoff Network’s own image & document archive as well as the collection the Rachmaninoff Network has digitally photographed at SENAR – Rachmaninoff’s holiday retreat on Lake Lucerne in Switzerland. [link to Project SENAR here]

 

The Rachmaninoff Network is planning to expand the database to public and private collections elsewhere in the world in order to digitally link all the many traces of Rachmaninoff’s life.