Re: arsclist storing

["George Brock-Nannestad" <pattac@xxxxxxxx>]

From: Patent Tactics, George Brock-Nannestad

Dear All,

I am afraid this is a longer comment, but the issues raised are 
central to all of us.

A number of persons have responded to Alain Carou's original 
query. The responses are all to the point, however they do not 
address Alain's original query: how do you store broken records?

Daniel Leech-Wilkinson was quite to the point in producing an 
argument why you need to keep the original, although it may be 
broken: because the physical evidence is a source of ancillary 
information that may shed a lot of light on the primary information. 
My latest contribution to this line of thought is in "What Are The 
Sources of The Noises We Remove", in Proceedings of the 20th 
AES International Conference "Archiving, Restoration, and New 
Methods of Recording" Budapest 2001 October 5-7, pp. 175-82. I 
may add other sources of information: the groove profile and the 
inner and outer diameter of the recorded area. In particular the 
latter is important in distinguishing between alternative takes, dubs, 
etc.. So, even if you will only be able to reproduce the disc as it 
was intended with exceeding difficulty, a number of important 
features are still available in the broken original.

Don Cox and Göran Finnberg opened the other line, namely that of 
the innumerable undocumented versions available of transfers from 
the original, all purporting or implying to be "the original" or "the 
truth". In fact, such representations are unethical. The mere 
transfers are not unethical, only the promises given. Since I started 
lecturing in this field in 1983 based on a source-critical approach, I 
have collected a lot of evidence of the tampering that has been 
going on from the earliest times of re-recording, and the results are 
ripping off the general public and researcher alike. 

Now back to Alain's query: I will mention solutions that I have 
myself used.

Since 1989 I have taught physical repair methods for mechanical 
recordings, of which 7 years at the School of Conservation in 
Copenhagen. It is a specialised undertaking, turning out to be very 
expensive. It is also quite unneccesary if just a replay is desired, 
because e.g. the ELP Laser Turntable does a magnificient job of 
playing fractured discs, provided the pieces have been correctly 
joined and fixed by tape on the reverse. For side 2 you will move 
the tapes to side 1. So, you end up with having to store a record in 
more than one piece.

If the smaller piece is just a bite off the edge, then one, primitive, 
solution is to put it in a small bag of 7 g/square meter Japanese 
paper and to jam it into the lower corner of the ordinary cardboard 
sleeve that you are storing your record in. The bag should be long 
enough to be visble at the label hole, so that it can easily be 
extracted. The important thing is to mark the cardboard sleeve 
itself very clearly that there is a loose piece inside

If there are several smaller pieces a solution is to keep these 
separate in a jewel-box for a CD without the black insert, again 
wrapped in thin, strong paper. Again, mark not only the catalogue 
but also the sleeve for the large part of the record that there is a 
small jewel-box somewhere else.

If the record is broken in two, then the two parts may be stored in 
one cardboard sleeve each, preferably without a label inspection 
hole.

When I say "cardboard" above I do not mean Kraft paper, but a 
heavy carton.

It may be preferable to keep the collection of broken records 
completely separate. They are actually the most valuable part of 
the whole collection, because the broken bits may be all that there 
is left in the World of the original (original meaning that it may be 
different in one or more physical characteristics from any other 
copy held).

Several threads may have sprung from Alain's original query. It is 
not for me to give them new subject headings.

Kind regards,

George Brock-Nannestad

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