Re: [ARSCLIST] Long-term/preservation audio

[Mwcpc6@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 7/3/03 5:35:23 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
arclists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:

>
>  It is not an easy thing to decide what needs to be archived--more is better
>  until the entire proposition collapses under its own weight.
>
>  Cheers,
>
>  Richard
>
This is why there needs to be a way of preserving "dead" audio; one that
requires no maintenance and what will survive literal burial.  It would be for
material of no conceivable commercial value, but that would be of interest to
historians trying to reconstruct the procedures and practices of the past.

As a result of this thread I finally played some of the discs that have
survived many years storage in a damp, occasionally flooded basement:  1/19/54:
Harp solo by the daughter of a local broadcast engineer; 4/23/57:  Girl Scouts
singing Camp songs; 6/12/41: amazingly inept church choir; 10/19/53: two
Carhardt commercials; 6/14/46: roundtable discussion of local issues; 194?: local air
raid Alert & All Clear;  Sentinel TV commercials; interviews of 1st graders
at an animal lending library.

I find these little time capsules fascinating now; much more so than another
rock song. However I suspect that if anyone had looked at them 30 or 40 years
ago, they would have been discarded. In fact the only reason they were
preserved is that fifty years ago sheet aluminum was hard to come by and a local ham
stashed these away to use for electronic construction projects.

What is the status of material of this nature now? I expect that most ARSC
members are swamped with similar material. Is anyone systematically trying to
archive it?  With the vast amount of commercial material to be maintained, is
there any room in cyberspace for such trivia?

Mike Csontos