The Maine music box: a pilot project to create a digital music library

The Maine Music Box is an interactive, multimedia digital music library that enables users to view images of sheet music, scores and cover art, play back audio and video renditions, and manipulate the arrangement of selected pieces by changing the key and instrumentation. In this pilot project the partners are exploring the feasibility and obstacles of combining collections, digital library infrastructure, and technical and pedagogical expertise from different institutions to implement a digital music library and integrate it into Maine's classrooms. This paper describes the methodology for digitizing, processing and providing access to electronic resources owned by two libraries and hosted by another, and the use of those collections to develop an instructional tool keyed to the digital library.