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Online content-searchable databases of music scores, unlike text databases, are extremely rare. The main reasons are the cost of digitization, the inaccessibility of original music scores and manuscripts, and the lack of sophisticated music recognition software. The proposed research seeks to circumvent these difficulties by investigating the feasibility of using existing microfilms for digitization. Compared to original scores, microfilms constitute more accessible and economical sources for digitization. Scanned images of music scores can be made content searchable through the use of optical music recognition (OMR) software developed by the applicant. The objective of this study is to determine whether the quality of images scanned from microfilm, rather than from the original score, is sufficient for the subsequent OMR process. If the digital image derived from microfilm is found to be acceptable for OMR, there will be tremendous economic benefits. The cost of building digital libraries is incurred mainly in the digitization process. The cost of digitization from microfilm is far lower than that of digitization from original documents. Using microfilms may also prove highly advantageous in data collection. Original music manuscripts are scattered in libraries, museums, and archives throughout the world. The exorbitant cost of traveling to these locations can be avoided through the use of microfilm collections that already exist in many music libraries. Finally, when a local archive decides to digitize its own collection, using available microfilms will obviate the necessity of handling and thereby potentially damaging precious manuscripts. The feasibility of digitizing from microfilm will be investigated by comparing the image quality of direct scan and microfilm scan of the same music scores. A high-quality flatbed scanner and a microfilm scanner will be used in the experiment. The principal metric is the recognition rate of the OMR process, although visual inspection of the image may be sufficient in some cases. Various types of music scores representative of different historical periods and microfilms produced from different sources and ranging in quality will be studied. The project will concentrate on music from the Medieval and Renaissance periods (including lute and guitar tablatures), because access to original sources from these periods is particularly difficult and because the software must be trained to recognize notation systems outside the common music notation system in current use. It is important to note that no other OMR software is capable of handling the types of music notations specific to Medieval and Renaissance music. The …