In far more than 100 Swiss museums musical instruments can be found. Relatively few of these are catalogued; most are even practically unknown to the general public. The GEFAM has given the initiative for a project that will register all these instruments in an inventory that will cover all of Switzerland.

In addition, privately owned instruments will be included on a voluntary basis. The only conditions are that the objects are sufficiently important to justify their inclusion and that it may be assumed that they will remain with their present owner for a long time.

The goal of the project is to provide and publish a list of musical instruments that is as complete as possible and yet avoids criticism, although the inventory will be assembled with all possible care. Musicologists, art historians, musical instruments makers and other persons interested will have access to this information. At the same time it is a national project that will register cultural objects in Switzerland.

Specialists are responsible for the data in the various instrument families. This assures the consistency of the data, which will always be established by the same person.

The registration was begun in 1996. The present experts are:

- for woodwind instruments: Dr. Martin Kirnbauer (Basel)
- for string instruments: Dr. Thomas Drescher (Basel)
- for keyboard instruments: Georg F. Senn (Binningen)
- for harpes and hurdy gourdys: Beat Wolf (Schaffhausen) www.beatwolf.ch

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Rules for the registration of the objects:

1. Basic data is collected for each instrument (location, inventory number, maker marks, basic measurements, remarkable features).
   
2. Mandatory for the inventory is the permission of the owning institution or person that the results of the registration may be published by the GEFAM as lists.
   
3. Copies of the preparatory basis for the cataloguing (notes, sometimes photographs) will be handed over to the collections and museums for their own use.
   
4. The catalogue cannot claim to be "critical." Time-consuming research, like for instance that involving difficult problems of attribution, is not possible in the process of the inventory.
   
5. No estimates of worth will be made.
   
6. Private collectors may remain anonymous, if they wish to do so, and can be mentioned in the form of a digital code. In this case only the GEFAM compilers for the published lists will know the meaning of the code. Any questions concerning these instruments would be communicated through the GEFAM.
   
7. Generally the cataloguing will be carried out free of charge. Should larger collections be able to contribute resources of their own to our project, they would be happily and gratefully accepted.

Your interest in our project would give us great pleasure. We are happy to answer any questions you might have and are also interested in your comments.