The origins of the Czech National Branch of the IAML date back to 1971, when it was established as the Czechoslovak IAML Group. However, direct, immediate cooperation with the IAML goes back further, to 1956, when mutually effective and for us directly representative international cooperation in the field of one of the most important IAML inventory projects, namely RISM, started and then successfully developed. Here we belong to the leading collaborators for more than half a century. This was followed relatively early, in the second half of the 1960s, by cooperation with another inventory project – RILM. Already in the 1980s, the IAML began to promote and then to apply permanently quality awareness of our active participation in the wider, growing range of music library and music documentation activities.

The members of the Czech branch are music libraries, libraries with music departments, museums, archives and music documentation centres. If we consider the activities of the Czech National Branche of the IAML against the background of the structure and objectives of the IAML, then its activities are mainly focused on specific workflows related to inventory projects, primarily in the field of direct historical music sources (RISM), literature on music (RILM), music periodicals between 1800 and 1950 (RIPM) and music iconography (RIdIM). In the last thirty years, the activity of public music libraries has become increasingly prominent, addressing legislative issues, especially in the process of using sound documents in library services, digitisation, etc.

Professional topics are discussed at the annual meetings as well as at seminars and specialised working meetings, held on the initiative of the Czech National Branch of the IAML in order to address current specific issues.

The international annual congress of the IAML, held in August 1991 in Prague for the first time, became an important milestone and a stimulus for further development of both Czech cooperation with the IAML and professional activities of this kind in the Czech Republic. In 2022, the IAML International Congress was again held in Prague, after two years of postponements caused by the coronavirus pandemic. See the programme and papers HERE.