Re: [ARSCLIST] How to determine the state of tapes?

[Marcos Sueiro Bal <mls2137@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello, Maurice,

I have been specifically dealing with this issue for the last 21 months 
as part of a Mellon grant. There is no easy answer, but some of us 
believe visual inspection can give us valuable information about the 
state of a tape collection. We are developing a survey tool to help 
trained curators determine the state of their audiovisual collections. 
NYU is also looking into this in a parallel project.

The best quick visual inspection method I know is Peter Brothers' 7-step 
process:

http://www.specsbros.com/whitepaper.html

You can read about our survey tool here:

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/news/libraries/2005/2005-09-29.mellon_grant.html

Let me know if you would like more information.

Cheers,

Marcos

Maurice Mengel wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I work in an archive which has accumulated many different sorts of tapes
> over the years (individual collectors donating material to the archive).
>
> How do I determine the state of the tapes? Is the a way to guess the state
> based on the tape material - recent discussions on this list suggest this -
> and if so where do I get information on the tapes?
>
> Thanks!
> Maurice Mengel
>