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Re: [ARSCLIST] Magnetic Tape - questions...
Melanie Brown wrote:
I work in an archive of mixed materials - paper collections and audio/visual collections. I am sorting through reel-to-reel 1/4" audio tape, and I am seeing things that are making me doubt my prior standards...
In the classroom and in many "best-practices" that I have read, reels are recommended to be stored tails-out, oxide facing in. When splicing repairs or attaching heads/tails, the splicing tape is to be place on the backing of the tape - the shiny side.
In my travels through the archive, I am noticing many reels that are wound shiny-side IN, and many many instances of splicing tape applied to the dull, recorded side.
Are my standards too high? Am I remembering my classroom notes backwards? Any thoughts would be appreciated, to help me make "heads or tails" of this. Thank you!
You were not misinformed and if matters are entirely as you have
described, those archives will be problematic when it comes time to
retrieve audio from the tapes. However, it is possible that the tape in
this case has a backing which may be even less shiny than the oxide
layer. Such a backing is typically very dark grey where the oxide is
usually brown; of course, the real test is to play back a non-critical tape.
Mike
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http://www.mrichter.com/