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I am wondering if there are any digital libraries offering search by example for audio files, e.g. upload part of a music file and the digital library recognizes the song and provides me information about it? So, something similar to Shazam, but directly integrated in a digital library.

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I don't know if you consider it a "digital library", but the MusicBrainz project have a sister service called AcoustID which uses an audio fingerprint to look up metadata for a given audio file. The tooling and data around AcoustID is opensource. So if you are building a digital library service you could theoretically integrate into your applications. If you are new to MusicBrainz it has been around for 12 years now, and its data is widely used and supported by organizations like the BBC, LastFM and Google.

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chromaprint, the specific fingerprint algorithm used in MusicBrainz is explained in this article. I also wonder whether music libraries have experimented with using it. – Jakob Jun 25 '12 at 15:22
Thank you, I am more interested in something being officially a digital library, like run by a voluntary organization or sth. like that. MusicBrainz is a nice example, though. – stefan.at.wpf Jun 26 '12 at 16:39
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MusicBrainz is a project of Metabrainz which is a non-profit organization run by donations and sponsorships. I believe quite a few people working on the project are volunteers, especially the people who enter metadata. In my opinion the term "digital library" meant more in the pre-Web days, and means less and less every day. I prefer to think of websites that offer services that are "library like"...and MusicBrainz definitely fits that category. /me gets off soapbox now :-) – Ed Summers Jun 29 '12 at 13:26

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