Further information about Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology

Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology began in 1952 as a publication of the Joint Committee of the Music Teachers National Association and the American Musicological Society, chaired by Helen Hewitt. For many years thereafter, Dr. Hewitt maintained and expanded Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology through its second (1957 [1958]), third (1961), and fourth (1965) editions and various supplements for the Journal of the American Musicological Society and the American Music Teacher. Beginning in 1966, Cecil Adkins assumed responsibility for the publication, and under his direction Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology flourished for many years: a fifth edition appeared 1971; in 1977, a new edition appeared as the International Index of Dissertations and Musicological Works in Progress; in 1984, the second international edition returned to the original title Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology, under the co-editorship of Cecil Adkins and Alis Dickinson; and in 1996, the second series, second cumulative edition appeared, once again under the co-editorship of Cecil Adkins and Alis Dickinson. The discipline of musicology remains enormously grateful to these three individuals for their long commitment to Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology.

In the mid-1990s, the Board of Directors of the American Musicological Society decided to move away from conventional publication of Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology in favor of electronic distribution of the information contained in this important and venerable reference tool. The AMS Committee on Technology discussed the issues at its meetings in 1994 and 1995, and a special Committee on DDM (comprised of Professors Thomas Bauman, David E. Crawford [chair], Thomas J. Mathiesen, and John H. Roberts) was eventually appointed to make a specific recommendation to the Board. The committee subsequently endorsed a proposal from the Thesaurus Musicarum Latinarum (TML) at Indiana University to develop the online version of Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology, DDM-Online, beginning in the Fall of 1996.

The new office of DDM-Online officially opened under the direction of Professor Mathiesen in September 1996, with preliminary work on the design of the site undertaken during the preceding summer. Records of new dissertation topics and completed dissertations, submitted after the closing date for the publication of the 1996 cumulation of Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology, were sent to Indiana University and entered in the new online resource. Over the years, all the records from the second international edition (1984) and from the second series, second cumulative edition (1996) of Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology were converted, updated, and incorporated into DDM-Online.

Professor Mathiesen served as director of DDM-Online from 1996 to Summer 2009, assisted by Dr. Nicholas M. Butler (1996-97), Professor Andreas Giger (1997-2000), and Dr. Peter Slemon (2000-2009). As Interim Director of the Center for the History of Music Theory and Literature (CHMTL), which provides a home for DDM-Online, Dr. Slemon assumed responsibility for DDM-Online in the Summer of 2009.

In the winter of 2010 the AMS Board of Directors decided to move DDM from the Center for the History of Music Theory and Literature, Indiana University, to the AMS office. In Summer 2010 Durrell Bowman scripted a wide range of search functions and installed DDM on the AMS web site.