This week, I'm packing up another batch of old tape reels from the NHPR archive, which I'll send to Crawford Media in Atlanta for digitization (or "migration", as they call it). I'll be documenting the process on the blog, so check back next week to see how it's moving. We worked with them last spring to digitize about 300 of our tape reels, courtesy of the American Archive Content Inventory Project (more below).
This is great news, because this batch will contain the last (roughly) 300 tape reels in our archive. These represent the most delicate assets in our archive; and to have them all digitized means we can not only access the audio more easily, but share it with you more easily. Among the recordings in this batch are Gov. Judd Gregg's State of the State Address from 1991, a recording of the WEVO Jazz Festival from 1985, and NHPR's live coverage of the 1984 general election.
This is all to say that I have no new-old audio for you this week. So instead I've collected a bunch of links for those interested about our archives project, or just plain old history buffs.
- The American Archive of Public Broadcasting is what has allowed NHPR to gain access to hundred of hours of audio trapped on legacy media (like tape reels).
- WBEZ spoke with Karen Cariani about the American Archive Project (starts at about 54:30 in).
- WNYC's Senior Archivist, Marcos Sueiro Bal, had a great post about the two factors with which archivists must wrestle to rescue audio from obsolete formats (ex. tape reels, wax cylinders, etc.).
- NPR is remembering 1984 throughout the year on this Tumblr, which recently featured this humble blog.
More audio next week. 'Til then!
