Community Based Music Information Retrieval: A Case Study of Digitizing Historical Klezmer Manuscripts from Kyiv

In this article we provide a case study in the datafication of historical handwritten manuscripts, which diversifies repertoire, approaches, demographics, and institutional partnerships MIR. The Kiselgof-Makonovetsky Digital Manuscript Project (KMDMP) is community-based project to digitize music text, teach, make from facsimiles manuscripts held by Vernadsky National Library Ukraine. corpus comprises 850 high-resolution photographs catalog pages, with total around 1,300 melodies. Much was collected pioneering Belarusian ethnographer Zusman Kiselgof among Jewish communities ‘Pale Settlement’ (mostly modern Ukraine Belarus) during An-Ski Expeditions 1912–1914. repertoire mixed, combining typical dance non-dance genres, European society folklore music, relatively small quantity songs liturgical chant settings. simultaneously encodes formats accessible computational musicology enhances creative musical community deeply valued heritage. We introduce dialogue recent Georgina Born on diversity field MIR; present material, issues for datafication, results thus far; describe elements that enhance community; demonstrate participants respect age, gender, nationality, profession; outline implications MIR ethnomusicology; suggest new funding models support cultural heritage documentation, preservation, continuity, analysis.