OpenScore, a new initiative by the popular open source music notation software vendor MuseScore, has launched a Kickstarter campaign to create machine readable editions of iconic classical works in the public domain. Kickstarter backers will be able to influence which pieces get transcribed first. They have partnered with IMSLP, the largest repository of public domain musical scans, with the intention of creating a sustainable and scalable workflow for creating a semantically complete music notation library. These scores have many advantages over the PDF scans that are currently available. They support machine playback, so a viewer can actually hear the music; they are convertible into other meaningful music formats, such as MIDI, MusicXML, and Braille notation (for blind musicians); they can be edited, arranged, corrected, and improved. The project takes inspiration from text and image based projects such as Wikipedia, and will utilize Creative Commons licensing. MuseScore has previously been involved with public domain music projects such as the Open Goldberg Variations.
I'm a big fan of MuseScore. This initiative will bring quality reable scores for free to anyone.