Nearly 1,900 Indiana-focused pieces featuring composers from Cole Porter to Noble Sissle, subjects from religion to military and styles from jazz to country comprise the Indiana State Museum’s sheet music collection.
“Since the new building opened in 2002, we have never not had sheet music on display,” said Katherine Gould, Assistant Curator of Cultural History. “All of our sheet music is related to Indiana in some way, either by composer, lyricist, publisher or subject matter. That specialized focus is largely what makes our collection so significant.”
Making all of these delicate paper artifacts accessible to researchers has been a challenge for the museum. Although the process of digitizing each piece of sheet music had started, the work progressed slowly. The solution appeared one day with a phone call from Indiana University.
The university wanted to form a cooperative group of Indiana University , the Indiana State Library, the Indiana Historical Society and the Indiana State Museum to utilize an Institute of Museum and Library Services grant designed 
to increase museum-library collaborations. The grant, divided between institutions, will be used to purchase a high-end computer and large-bed scanner to digitize the materials and hire a student to do the majority of the digitization.
“The project itself is on mission for the museum,” Gould said. “The end result will be global access to this collection via the website. This sort of project also will increase our museum’s standing in the community and it has lots of practical applications for us. Without this grant, it would take us much longer to complete the work.”
The first year of the project has been focused on planning and preparation. In 2005, the Indiana University team has worked on software, including methods of search terminology and classifications that will work for all involved institutions, while the other institutions prepared their documents for digitization. Digitization should begin in January 2006.
“From the first meeting of our institutions, it was clear what the main obstacle would be – four organizations with four methods of cataloging,” Gould said. “The goal is to create a website that will give each institution what it needs.”
The value of this project goes beyond historical preservation of the written music, it also will preserve the beautifully designed covers of these pieces. Most historical sheet music did not contain words, only annotation of notes to be played, so composers relied on artistic covers to stimulate interest in their pieces.
“The artwork is so lovely that players often judged a piece by its cover and selected the best design,” Gould said. “These pieces are one of our most significant holdings. This project will bring deserved recognition to the museum as having one of the premiere collections of historic American sheet music in the country.”