The Project Gutenberg Music Subproject is devoted to digitizing musical scores for a variety of uses. Most scores so far have been chamber music by composers such as Mozart and Beethoven. This document is to give a brief overview of what is needed to digitize a new score for the Project Gutenberg collection.
As for any Project Gutenberg submission, the first step is to secure a copyright clearance. US copyright laws make inclusion of items post-1922 problematic. Generally, the best bet is to use a printed score from pre-1923.
The choice of what software to use for digitization is up to you. There are three main contenders: Finale, Sibelius, and Lilypond. The first two are commercial software products with many features. The last is an open source project (really, a markup format) associated with several different tools. Our experience is that any can be used to create top-quality digital scores, and that each has its limitations.
The output formats are up to you, but we encourage all possible output formats for your digitization method. These may include:
There are other software choices, and other formats. When possible, consider making the separate parts available as separate files (i.e., so Violin 1 could have her own score, and Viola could have his own score).
If you have questions, or ideas about how to proceed, please email music_AT_pglaf.org. Thanks for your interest in contributing to the Project Gutenberg Music subproject!