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After hearing Steve give a couple of interviews when he talks about the longevity of reel to reel tape vs. digital media, I was curious to know what preservation steps you guys take to protect your masters at electrical.


I am mainly curious because I work in an archives and we are starting to recieve a lot of old reel to reel tapes and I have no idea what steps to take to ensure their preservation. We recently got about 30 old 1/4" reels of Library of Congress field recordings of folksongs in South Georgia that I would really hate to lose because I didn't store them properly. Any help would be appreciated.

field recordings of south georgia should be cherished no doubt..


i would think the standard climate control would suffice..
excess heat/humidity that sort of thing.

obviously no em radiation..right?

maybe watch for print threw?

you'll probably want to make copies
you'll probably want to do this on reel to reel and other formats..

just a guess..

They are kept in a climate/humidity controlled environment. About 64 temp 42% humidity.

They are stored in hollinger boxes and never see the light of day.

They are backed up digitally as .wav files and I think I'll look in to copying them onto some new reels. (They are 30+ years old.)

One more question though.

Do I ever need to exercise the tapes to prevent the magnetic material from falling off the tape? If so, how often should I do this?

Always store reel to reel tapes vertically.

Maybe put them in zip-lock bags or some sort of sealed plastic bag.

bob

o_d_m wrote:... I would really hate to lose because I didn't store them properly.

Room temperature is suffice. Make copies. Even if you drop one in the toilet it's salvageable.

Bob,

why store them vertically?


Jeremy

Just think about the way the tape sits on the reel.

Horizontally, over time the weight of the tape would deform the flat pack and remove any of the benefits of the library-wind / flat-pack / tails-out archival practices.

Vertically stored, the pack stays intact.

This is a well known archival practice. I'm sure you can read about it in some AES or NARAS or LoC document somewhere.

b

We just happened to store them vertically, they fit in the boxes better that way. I'm now glad that we did.

They are all still inside the original cardboard boxes that they were probably sold in. Is it okay to leave them there?

You can (should) leave them in their original packaging. The idea occurred to me a while ago to shrink-wrap reels with a packet of dessicant inside. I haven't spoken to anyone who thinks this is a bad idea.

Where can one buy those little dessicant packs? I'd like to throw them in my negative/print archive boxes - but I do not buy enough pairs of shoes to make this possible.

burun wrote:Where can one buy those little dessicant packs? I'd like to throw them in my negative/print archive boxes - but I do not buy enough pairs of shoes to make this possible.

http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dl ... category0=

Hope this helps.