ChoralWiki:Another record year for CPDL

As 2015 draws to an end, the Choral Public Domain Library reaches the 17th year since it was started at the end of 1998 by Rafael Ornes. From that modest beginning, managed and maintained by Raf, CPDL grew during those first few years, garnering new scores from a number of contributors interested in making public domain music freely available. By 2005, the original website format had become unmanageable enough that Raf decided to port it to a new Wiki site, calling it ChoralWiki, enlisting the help of volunteers to aid with its initial structure, maintenance and growth.

With the success of the transition to the ChoralWiki and added pressures of other commitments, Raf found it necessary to step back from direct management of CPDL. Thus, in the summer of 2008 he turned over the day-to-day maintenance and issues of the future direction and management of CPDL to a transition group, which organized itself into several groups with focus on various aspects of the operation of CPDL.

These efforts resulted in CPDL being incorporated in May 2010 as a U.S.A. 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charitable organization, with membership vested in a seven member all volunteer Board of Directors. This event signalled two things, other than the important fact that individuals can make tax-deductible charitable contributions to CPDL:

First, CPDL is here to stay with a commitment to preserving and providing its collection of choral-scores to the public for free download for the foreseeable future.

Second, CPDL is committed to steady improvement, not only in the number and variety of its scores, but also in the quality of its editions. As the quality of music engraving software has improved, contributors of editions have been encouraged to make use of best practice in preparing their editions, and users are encouraged to assist in error tracking and correction.

A great deal of the work which users of CPDL do not see is carried out, behind the scenes (although easily enough visible given the Wiki structure of ChoralWiki), by those who volunteer their services with what must seem to some as the mundane chores of maintenance and improvement. When individuals have become enough involved and demostrated a serious enough commitment, they are often approached and asked if they would be willing to join the group of Administrators, which brings with it additional editing and administrative options — and responsibilities. In the course of time, administrators come and go, or they might become limited with the amount of available time to devote to CPDL activities. Consequently, we are always looking for new users to step forward and assume maintenance work at the ChoralWiki, even as we identify and recruit some active users to become administrators. As CPDL grows, at what has recently been an expanding rate, this need does not diminish.

Some comments on the growth of CPDL are in order. At the end of 2009, some eleven years since its founding, CPDL had 11,000 score pages of works by more than 1550 composers. In November of 2010, a 1500 new score pages goal was set and achieved, and after a "light" year in 2011 with only 1303 new score pages, 2012 saw a rebound with 1722 new score pages. Buoyed by that success, a goal of 1800 was set for 2013 and revised upwards to 2000 when new score pages rolled in during the first third of the year, and the year ended with more than 2100 new score pages. The same 2000 goal was surpassed in 2014, again with more than 2100 new score pages. Then came the current year, 2015. The 2000 new score pages goal was achieved in September with 99 days still left in the year, and score contributions continued to mount, so that with eight days still remaining in the year, we are at 134% of the goal – 2680 new score pages so far and likely to pass 2700 by the end of the year. The goal for 2016 will be set at 2500 new score pages, an ambitious total, but a reasonable and attainable one, given that this past year has seen a bumper crop of new scores. Now, as CPDL approaches its 17th birthday, there are at least 21,760 choral and vocal works with free scores downloadable from the ChoralWiki. Since incorporation in May of 2010, in just five and a half years, CPDL has added scores of approximately 10,000 previously unavailable works. Such is the response of our excellent community of users who prepare and publish editions of scores here at CPDL. It is these contributors to our ever growing collection that heartfelt and appreciative thanks are due.

Finally, we would like to thank those who have supported us with monetary Donations that help defray various costs, especially the costs of paying for and maintaining the several servers for our ChoralWiki contributor, visitor, and test sites. As CPDL grows, so do our computational resource needs grow, even as we seek to provide better service and ease of use for those who make use of our collection. We deeply appreciate your financial support.

Charles H. Giffen
President of Choral Public Domain Library and
Manager of ChoralWiki
23 December 2015

To make any comments, feel free to click on the Discussion tab at the top of this page and add them. Don't forget to "sign" and date-stamp your comment by typing four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment.