I am happy to announce that tomorrow, July 2, at the IAML 2026, the annual congress of the International Association of Music Libraries, I will be contributing with two presentations:

  1. A free paper with Nikos Poulakis — Finale's Coda: Digital Obsolescence and Vendor Lock-in following the Finale Discontinuation — reports on a survey of composers after the discontinuation of the Finale notation software. It looks at how much work is now held in a single proprietary format, how little is being done to preserve it, and what role music libraries might play in supporting open standards and long-term access.

  1. A contribution to the round table Manuscripts of the Eastern Christian Chant Traditions: Catalogues, Metadata, Research tools (IMS Study Group "Music of the Christian East"), where I'll present https://local-liturgical-repertories.music.uoa.gr/, a digital repository for the Cretan Liturgical Repertory, containing metadata for 65 manuscripts and 3,600 compositions, and its linked-data metadata model, which connects to the wider Greek manuscript tradition.

The paper entitled Timestamping Metadata Using Blockchain: A Practical Approach was published in the Springer Nature series.

Abstract: Long-term preservation of digital information requires confidence in the credibility and ability of digital archives and systems to consistently provide accessible and usable content. Ensuring that the provided information has remained unchanged over time is a particular challenge. Trusted timestamping is an effective method that allows anyone to prove without any doubt that specific content existed at a particular date and time. A practical approach for trusted timestamping using the Ethereum blockchain is presented here. A complete metadata record is stored as transaction input data along with a document hash digest. The approach is uncomplicated, human and machine readable, self-explanatory, and modular. It supports metadata preservation and copyright protection of digital documents applying verification without disclosure. The approach aims at extending current digital archives and systems using existing, well-tested technology.

Keywords: Trusted Timestamping, Ethereum Blockchain, Digital Preservation, Copyright Protection

Tassos Kolydas presented a paper at the 13th International Conference on Metadata and Semantics Research, Rome, Italy, on October 29th, 2019.

The paper was entitled: Timestamping Metadata Using Blockchain: 
A Practical Approach

MTSR is an annual international inter-disciplinary conference, which brings together academics, researchers and practitioners in the specialized fields of metadata, ontologies and semantics research. The conference provides an opportunity for participants to share knowledge and novel approaches in the implementation of semantic technologies across diverse types of information environments and applications.