IMSLP Forums

I am Vivian Fine's daughter and would like to contribute a number of my mother's scores, for which I hold the copyright, to the IMSLP site.

These are handwritten scores on paper larger than letter size, usually 11 x 14. What I have are copies (the originals are in the Library of Congress). The print quality of the copies I have varies from excellent to poor.

There are a few scores I have had transcribed into Finale and I would like to upload these as well.

There are several hundred pages at least I'd like to upload. I'd like to know the most cost-efficient way of doing this. My local copy store has scanned a couple of scores for me and if I have to I'll use them but it's expensive. At home all I have is a Dell all-in-one printer which can only scan letter size documents.

I need instructions on how to scan the music and how to upload it onto IMSLP. If they are on the IMSLP web site I couldn't find them.

I am 68 years old and—again--not tech-savvy. I have a Sony VAIO computer with Windows Vista operating system. I know how to use email and Microsoft Word and do google searches, but that's about it. I have a high-speed internet connection.

Very appreciative of any help you can give.

Peggy Karp
Sebastopol, CA

These days most photocopiers have the ability to scan. I do my scanning at work where the photocopier will email the scanned images to you. If you are retired, then that solution won't really work for you, but there may be other places where you can get access to one. Many volunteer organizations and churches have offices with photocopiers. If you are a involved with any group like this, that might be a possibility. Alternately, if you have younger friends who have access to a photocopier at work, they might be able to scan the scores for you.

Peggy, in all honesty, I think the best thing for you and your mother's works would be to get the materials into the hands of someone who is more capable. I think you'll find that, if you do not, you'll quickly be swimming in the deep end of a very large pool.

Dear Peggy,

Aside from the scanning issue, I seem to recall that you had an issue to be resolved with regard to your sister's approval for this project. I hope you have resolved this. There's another issue you need to consider before proceeding: whether you wish to receive royalties from live and broadcast performances of your mother's work from ASCAP (where I see she is registered). ASCAP will refuse to collect on anything you place on this site under a Creative Commons License, so you will have to make certain that you use our Performance Restricted license if you plan on continuing with ASCAP as you performing rights society. We have been discussing the issues of licensing with ASCAP recently, and want to make certain that composers (and heirs) can be paid for all live and broadcast performances of their copyrighted works except the few types of performances which are legally exempted from collection, while making the actual scores (and even parts) available for easy and free download.

As for scanning on a large scale. I can recommend the following company, which has done a fair amount of music scanning for publishers I have worked with over the years:

http://discountdocumentscanning.com/index.html

President: Paul Hawkins

Phone: (905) 628 - 0094 (Eastern Time)

Address:

Discount Document Scanning
26 Moss Blvd. Unit 23
Dundas, Ontario
L9H 6W7 Canada

Feel free to send me a PM or contact me via my user page on the wiki if you have any questions. I'll be happy to phone you and discuss everything in detail.

Best Wishes,

Carolus
IMSLP Copyright Admin

Thanks to all who posted replies, especially to Carolus for all the important info to get me started. I already have a few scores as pdfs, made from Finale/Sibelius files by the engraver. so I'm going to start with these. Then I'm going to try and take one score through the whole process of scanning/editing/uploading myself. I'm sure questions will come up along the way and sincere TIA for help with these.