Contribution guide
Accepted formats
| Sheet music, documents | PDF preferred: one file for the whole piece, not one image per page. |
| Photos, magazine/catalog pages | JPG or PNG. A single high-resolution scan beats several low-resolution ones. |
| Video | MP4 (H.264) if you're digitizing yourself. Whatever a transfer service gives you is usually fine as-is. |
| Audio | MP3 or WAV. FLAC is welcome if you have it; it won't be rejected for size, see below. |
Scanning advice
- A flatbed scanner beats a phone photo when one's available; even a phone scanning app (most have a "document" or "flatten" mode) is a big step up from a plain photo of a page.
- For a multi-page document, scan it as one PDF, not a series of separate image files (most scanner software and phone scanning apps do this automatically).
- 300 DPI is a reasonable default for text and photos; go higher (600 DPI) for anything with fine detail worth preserving, like hand-annotated sheet music.
- Scan the whole page, including margins; trimming can cut off dates, stamps, or handwritten notes that turn out to matter.
- If something is fragile, a photograph in good, even light is better than risking damage on a scanner bed.
Uploading
Every contribution form lets you either upload a file directly (up to 100MB) or paste a link to one hosted elsewhere (Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.); uploading is usually simpler, and it means the file lives with the rest of the archive rather than depending on an outside link staying alive. If a file is over 100MB, a link is the only option.
What happens after you submit
Anything new (an item, an album, sheet music, a folio, a catalog entry) is published immediately. A moderator still reads every one of them afterwards and will reach out if something's unclear.
Edits to a record someone else added are the exception: those wait for a moderator to approve them, since they change something people may already be citing.
Once your first submission is accepted, you're automatically promoted from a plain account to a contributor. Sheet music you submit is routed into the medium's shared community library at first; once you've had a number of arrangements approved in a given medium, further contributions there go into a library of your own.
How roles work
Every account sits at one point on a ladder that only ever moves up automatically as you contribute; nobody has to ask for a promotion, and nothing here is assigned by favor.
| User | Everyone starts here. Read and comment access, and can contribute new material. |
| Contributor | Automatic, the moment your first submission is approved. |
| Librarian | Automatic, once you've had enough arrangements approved in one medium; from then on, your contributions there go into a library of your own instead of the shared community pool. |
| Moderator / Admin | Staff roles, assigned rather than earned by contribution count: reads through new contributions, approves pending edits, manages publishers and libraries, and can review restricted scans. |
Researcher status is separate from this ladder entirely, not another rung on it; it's about who can view restricted sheet music scans, not who can manage content. Once you've had 25 contributions approved, you can submit a written request explaining your interest; a moderator reviews and approves it, the same way any other contribution is reviewed. A librarian, an admin, or a plain contributor can all independently be a researcher too; the two tracks don't affect each other. See researcher access for what that grants and what it doesn't. Scans of works marked public domain are visible to everyone regardless of role; see copyright & responsible use for how that's decided.