IPI receives grant for preservation of magnetic tape collections

Press release:

    RIT Studies Increasing Shelf Life for History Preserved on Tape:
    Image Permanence Institute receives grant to enhance magnetic
    tape storage

    The sights and sounds of recent history come alive again by
    pressing the "play" button thanks to the preservation of these
    moments on magnetic tape. Researchers at Rochester Institute of
    Technology are working to assure these audio and video
    recordings remain a viable resource to future generations.

    The Image Permanence Institute (IPI), part of RIT is School of
    Photographic Arts and Sciences, received nearly $400,000 to
    support its three-year study, Preservation of Magnetic Tape
    Collections. The grant is made possible by the National
    Endowment for the Humanities.

    "As a research lab, the Image Permanence Institute is dedicated
    to preserving that part of our cultural heritage captured on
    recording media," explains James Reilly, IPI director. "With
    this research grant, we will be able to focus on the
    deterioration of magnetic tape and work on creating techniques
    to help libraries, museums and archives save their collections."

    With the development of audio tapes in the late 1940s and the
    first video recorders in the mid 1950s, magnetic tape became a
    valuable tool for recording important national and world events.
    But storage of magnetic tape is not permanent. Most magnetic
    tapes deteriorate within 10 to 30 years. The Library of Congress
    Report on the State of America Television and Video Preservation
    (1997) summed up the state of magnetic tape records as
    precarious.

    Preservation methods developed within IPI labs will be tested on
    established collections at a half dozen prominent institutions.
    These participants include Columbia Library, Kennedy Library,
    the Motion Picture, Broadcast and Recorded Sound Division of the
    Library of Congress, State Archives of Michigan, and Northeast
    Historic Film.

    IPI, the world is largest independent laboratory devoted to
    research in the preservation of information recording material,
    is co-sponsored by RIT and the Society for Imaging Science and
    Technology (IS&T). IPI research is an important source of new
    preservation technology for libraries, archives, government
    agencies and museums around the world.

    For more information on IPI, visit <URL:http://www.rit.edu/ipi>.


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 17:6
                  Distributed: Thursday, June 26, 2003
                        Message Id: cdl-17-6-007
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