Dear Ed,
The general direction of large collection archiving is to store
everything in managed servers with off-site backup. We can call that
many things, including "digital repository" and "trusted digital
archive".
For a collection of your size, the options for disk-based or tape-based
off-site backup are both viable. The primary storage would be a robust
disk drive system.
Selecting collection management software is a big hurdle and I have no
recommendations in that area.
IASA standards state that a minimum of 48,000 samples per second should
be used when digitizing and most of us adhere to the 24-bit
recommendation as well. As IASA says, "some material would benefit from
higher sample rates". This would be high-quality music and drama
recordings, not "announce booth" or small-studio readings.
I think the consensus is that the material which is already digitized
at other sample rates and bit depths (as long as they are very common
ones like 44,100 samples per second and 16 bits (CD and some DAT))
should be ingested into the digital repository in their native format.
This may invite differing opinions.
Storing the material as WAV files in the digital repository is also the
accepted standard. MP3 and other compressed files may be generated at
the same time in order to provide lower-bit-rate access copies.
I have some hopefully useful information at www.richardhess.com/notes/
and you can read about the tape digitization and restoration work I do
at www.richardhess.com/tape/
There are lists of resources on the ARSC web site ( www.arsc-aurio.org
). One of the most useful resources is the IASA TC-04 document
(available from IASA), at least for the technical side of audio
digitization.
In order to help you go through the collection and prioritize
sub-portions, the FACET tool from Indiana University is quite useful as
it helps to identify and quantify risks to the collection. That, and
the documents from the Sound Directions project are available here:
http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/projects/sounddirections/
Many of us here can answer specific questions. We each have our own
areas of experience.
A few of my "soapbox" items are:
- Get as good a playback as possible -- this is the last time the
tape will be played
- Don't destroy/dispose of the original analog tapes
- Just because person A can't play the tape doesn't mean person B
can't as well.
A note on the last point: the hard disk drive I ranted about here a few
weeks ago was unrecoverable both by CBL and DriveSavers. Most likely
because of a well-intentioned, but ill-advised opening of the drive by
a computer "consultant" prior to sending it to CBL. If you're not sure
of the recovery method and you think something is wrong in any media,
don't "guess" and don't take steps that may make the situation worse.
My summary paper of tape degradation factors was recently published in
the ARSC Journal and now is online at
http://www.richardhess.com/tape/history/HESS_Tape_Degradation_ARSC_Journal_39-2.pdf
Good luck with a worthwhile and exciting project!
Cheers,
Richard
At 04:25 PM 2009-01-05, Morman, Ed wrote:
Dear experts on recorded sound preservation,
The National Federation of the Blind owns thousands, if not tens of
thousands, of hours of sound recordings that we need to preserve in the
most efficient way, while still having ready access to them. All of our
current recording is done digitally, and stored on MAM-A professional
grade gold CDs. Our collections extend back to the 1950s and include
reel-to-reel and cassette masters, as well as digital audio tape and
other digitized recordings on CDs. Much of the digitization of the
older material was done haphazardly.
As you can imagine, the sound archives are quite important to an
organization of blind people. We would like retrospectively to insure
that all our recordings are digitized professionally and stored in a
little space as possible given concerns for preservation.
We recently joined ARSC, and I signed up for this listserv in order to
learn from folks in the sound preservation enterprise.
Any advice you can provide will be much appreciated!
I thank you in advance.
Ed Morman
Edward T. Morman, MSLS, PhD
Director, Jacobus tenBroek Library
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND JERNIGAN INSTITUTE
1800 Johnson Street
Baltimore MD 21230
410.659.9314 x2225
410.6595129 (fax)
Richard L. Hess email: richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Aurora, Ontario, Canada (905) 713 6733 1-877-TAPE-FIX
Detailed contact information: http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.