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GCN Home > 05/01/06 issue

Catch a .wav

Inside a digitization project at the Library of Congress

By William Jackson, GCN Staff

If you’re on your third copy of the White Album or you can’t find a phonograph needle to play your Elmore James 78s, you can understand the plight of the Library of Congress: A collection of nearly 3 million recordings in every format from wax cylinders, to disks and tapes, to CDs, most of them playable only on obsolete equipment.

Eugene DeAnna, head of the library’s Recorded Sound Section, calls format obsolescence “the plague of audio recording from the beginning.”

Just as troublesome is the deteriorating condition of physical media, which are becoming more difficult to play back safely over time. So archivists want a standard for preserving recorded audio that will ensure recordings remain available for future generations.

“It is alarming to realize that nearly all recorded sound is in peril of disappearing or becoming inaccessible within a few generations,” the LOC’s National Recording Preservation Board warned in a recent report on best practices for capturing analog sound.

The task faced by the library continues to grow. Michael Taft, archivist for the National Folklife Center, announced recently the acquisition of a collection of 186 one-sided 78-rpm test pressings from artists including Sonny Boy Williams, Lil Johnson and two Blind Willies—Johnson and McTell. Perhaps most significant are 25 sides by seminal blues singer Robert Johnson. Johnson recorded only 29 songs in his brief career but was a major influence in blues and on British and American rock music. “You can’t hear him any clearer than you can on these recordings,” Taft said.

DeAnna also announced the discovery in the archives of unsuspected recordings of a jam session with jazz great Lester Young.

“No one was looking for it,” DeAnna said. “No one knew it existed.” (For the latest additions to the National Recording Registry, go to GCN.com, Quickfind 561.)

Now, these treasures have to be preserved.

Seeking standards

The board, which was created by the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000, convened a panel of experts in March to establish digital file standards and metadata schema for preserving old recordings.

Although digital formats seems like a logical choice for preservation, archivists are a cautious lot and did not adopt digital technology until it was forced upon them.

“We were fairly late in coming to digital,” DeAnna said. “As late as 1999 the standard archival approach was that it is better to stick to tape. Two years later, nobody was making tape.”

More news on related topics: Content / Record Management, Management, IT Management



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