John Chester coils cables, whilst AES President Elect, James Anderson, Meeting moderator Robert Auld, and presenters Brad McCoy and David Nolan try not to blink.
he 92nd Street Y has a substantial historical archive — much of it on
magnetic tape. Today, performances are recorded on Pro Tools
systems. David Nolan's job encompasses both conversion of the tape archive
to digital format, and preservation of new recordings.
Original tapes were rarely labeled in a standardized (or even adequate)
fashion. For example, an entire shelf of tapes where each box contains
only the notation "Poetry" and a date poses a real problem for the
archivist, who must then review the recording to create metadata. Both
presenters agreed on the importance of generating adequate metadata,
converting it to a standardized format, and storing it in a database.
Recordings at the 92nd Street Y are now archived as Pro Tools
sessions. Mr. Nolan stressed the importance of establishing a style for
track names and layout, and ensuring that all sessions conform to that
style before committing them to the archive.
He refuses to call anything a backup if it's stored on site. Two copies
sitting on the same shelf? That's not a backup.
Brad McCoy works at the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in
Culpepper, Virginia, 60 miles south of Washington. This new 415,000 square
foot campus, which was created in collaboration with the Packard Humanities
Institute, includes underground storage space for the Library of Congress
Moving Image and Sound Recording collections and modern, well-equipped
workspace for the archivists.
Mr. McCoy told us that the AES Library, an extensive collection of audio
related publications which the AES donated to the Library of Congress, is
now on display at NAVCC. It can be visited by appointment.
The Conservation Building, at the center of the campus, has an entire floor
dedicated to audio. It includes a media prep area where discs and tapes
can be properly cleaned prior to playback, critical listening rooms, and
transfer studios.
Current practices (which are still under development) call for transfer of
analog recordings to 96k 24 bit broadcast WAV files. Digital restoration
work is never done during the original transfer. Metadata is extracted and
entered into a database. The digital files are stored on a large local
file server, with tape backup. Copies are also sent via fiber links to
off-site backup facilities. Files will be migrated to more modern servers
as needed.
In addition to preserving original media, NAVCC seeks to preserve legacy
equipment needed to play the original media. They have an "antique format
room", which among other things includes a large collection of wire
recorders. They also have some new methods of playing old media, such as
IRENE. It can "play" a disc recording by analyzing a high-resolution image
of the disc. Mr. McCoy reports that this is particularly valuable for
playing broken discs, which would be difficult or impossible to play with a
conventional stylus.
The NAVCC is grappling with the problem of preserving "born digital"
material, which may arrive in many different formats. They will always
seek to preserve a copy in the original format, although access copies may
be created in other standardized formats. They have a facility which
captures material from the Web, which has been dubbed the "TIVO room".
Much more information on NAVCC facilities can be found at their Web
site: http://www.loc.gov/avconservation/
The presentations were followed by a lively audience discussion.
