On Tuesday, February 19, 2008 6:07 AM, Gregoria G. Karman wrote:
About one third of the tapes are in unoptimal condition (mechanical degradation, curly tape, some are affected by molds ...) and a number of them are spliced tape assemblies.
As I don't know how long it will take before the project can be accomplished, would you reccomend to migrate now the tapes to new archival containers? Migrating from the original boxes has the problematic that they contain annotations and documentation bound to the tapes.
Hi Gregorio,
Rather than re-box the collection, I would suggest some other intermediate steps: (1) separate out the moldy material, (2) separate out the acetate tapes and re-box those, and (3) collect metadata from the boxes in preparation for the project. Some details...
We collect the descriptive, administrative and technical metadata from the tape boxes during the digitizing process. Where there are significant notations on the box (track listings, engineering notes), we scan the box (and sometimes even the reel itself) on a flat bed scanner and bind the digital image scan files to the reel metadata.
So one suggestion would be to fully document all the notations on the boxes and reels, including image scans where needed, before re-boxing the collection.
At the very least, you should separate the moldy media from the non-moldy media. If you can put the moldy reels into ziploc bags together with some silica gel packs, the low humidity in the bag should at least drive the mold into dormancy and stabilize the collection, and the sealed ziploc bags will prevent the mold from migrating to other media.
Moldy media should be handled separately from storage to digitizing, so separating the reels along these lines would be a valuable effort, as you may need to outsource the treatment and digitizing of these moldy reels. Even after the reels have been treated, you should still consider keeping this material separate from other collections - it only takes a few spores and the right environment to spawn a new mold colony. I'm not aware of any process that can guarantee 100% eradication of mold.
For the non-moldy media, if the reels are stable (ie. no mold, no Vinegar Syndrome), then there is little or no benefit to re-boxing the reels, except perhaps some mechanical protection if the box is starting to fall apart. New boxes will have no impact on curling, sticky shed, or the splices.
If the original boxes are cardboard, this can actually be good, as cardboard seems to minimize the potential for an acidic environment that can lead to Vinegar Syndrome. However, new base-buffered boxes may stave off future Vinegar Syndrome among the acetate tapes in your collection.
In summary and other notes:
1. If you foresee replacing all the boxes, consider documenting and/or imaging the notations on the boxes and reels themselves.
2. Separate moldy media from the collection and stabilize with ziploc bags and silica gel packs.
3. Identify acetate based tapes, and perhaps re-box with base- buffered cardboard boxes. Separating out the acetate tapes may also provide some insurance against accidental baking with polyester tapes suffering from sticky shed.
4. Hope that you don't have any reels that are a spliced mix of acetate and polyester, with polyester that suffers from sticky shed, as these will have to be carefully unspliced, polyester segments baked or pelloned, and then re-assembled for transfer.
I'm sure others on this list will have additional perspectives.
Eric Jacobs
The Audio Archive, Inc. tel: 408.221.2128 fax: 408.549.9867 mailto:EricJ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx