Re: [ARSCLIST] Advice needed on audio cassette cases

[Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Ashlie:

If these are what you mean:
http://tinyurl.com/28jmha
I have seen these used in libraries and other circulating-collection tye places. They seem to work 
just fine and take a licking.

I have always used these:
http://tinyurl.com/2fzf6m
to replace old-style black-back boxes in my collection, but I don't have stuff circulating or 
dropping on hard floors.

The big advantage to the soft boxes is that they don't shatter when dropped. The higher quality ones 
snap closed and are more likely to hold the cassette in the box when dropped. I have never heard of 
them damaging tape via plastic out-gassing or other such things but anything seems possible.

I very much agree with your instinct not to use multi-tape albums. These are usually not a good way 
to hold cassettes as they pinch or press or otherwise force the tape to be held in place.  I have 
seen one case where a multi-tape album was stored in a hot closet and warped and pressed enough to 
warp tape shells and damage tape pack. So I would highly not recommend such things.

If this collection is of older tapes, I'd make it a funding priority to transfer them to high-rez 
digital. Cassettes are the cockroaches of tapes, in that they seem able to sit on a shelf for a very 
long time and still spring back to life when needed. But they wear out too, the biggest two problems 
I've seen being the cassette housing falls apart (fixable) and loss of signal level on the tape (not 
fixable, degrades audio quality, especially if the tape is Dolby encoded, especially Dolby C).

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "KEYLON, ASHLIE" <KEYLON@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2007 5:02 PM
Subject: [ARSCLIST] Advice needed on audio cassette cases


Dear Collective Wisdom,

Does anyone know if audio cassette cases are archivally safe? I'm not meaning archival storage boxes 
for multiple cassettes---I mean the hard (or sometimes soft) plastic cassette housing cases.

We have a special collection (recently donated to us) of hundreds of cassettes in which the plastic 
cases are broken and need replacing. My colleague, who processed this collection, is suggesting we 
purchase Norelco soft poly boxes. You can see them <a 
href=http://www.tapes.com/index.php?cPath=199_200_201&osCsid=fc1a3eccca0c987077b618dd874bc423> 
here</a>.

What do you use? Is there any archival information on these cases?

Any information would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Ashlie Conway
Ashlie_conway@xxxxxxxxx