Navigating the Analog Waves: Digitizing Audio Cassettes for Your Collection

AUDIO

Navigating the

WAVES

Photo from “History of the Quest Club”, SW McGill, 1948

ME Kay Gregg kgregg@acpl.info

TAPE ARCHIVE

MLS student, IUPUI

Idealistic about:

Collection Development

Archives and Records Management

Digital Libraries

Public Library Management

Cataloging

INTERNSHIP

WHAT I DIDWHAT I LEARNED

PRESENTATION

Photo from “History of the Quest Club”, SW McGill, 1948

MY PROJECT

QUEST CLUB•Lecture society presenting

since 1911•Recording audio since 1974•Fort Wayne power brokers:

streets, parks and schools

Photo from “History of the Quest Club”, SW McGill, 1948

“The Quest Club of Fort Wayne, provides a forum to prepare, present, and discuss original research by Club members on social, economic, scientific, cultural, political, and historical topics.”

“The Quest Club of Fort Wayne, provides a forum to prepare, present, and discuss original research by Club members on social, economic, scientific, cultural, political, and historical topics.”

HOUSED IN THE BASEMENT

GOALS1. Set up a digitization station to process cassette taperesources in the Genealogy Center.

GOALS2. Create a metadata template to attach information to each record.

GOALS3. Identify archival standards for digital audio.

GOALS4. Create a public collection using the library's content management system, contentDM.

GOALS5. Author training materials for Genealogy Center staff and volunteers.

http://vimeo.com/32169623

GOAL 1DIGITIZATION STATION

HARDWARE

LAPTOP WITH SOUNDCARDFAST-ish PROCESSORBIG INTERNAL HARDRIVE

Intel Core 2 Duo 2GHz CPU 3GB RAM 250GB HDD

HARDWARE

TASCAM PortaStudio 2 trackNICE HEAD PHONESQUIET ROOM

HARDWARE2 2 TB EXTERNAL DRIVES

SOFTWARE

Audacity

SOFTWARE

contentDM

SOFTWARE

Adobe Acrobat Pro

SOFTWARE

EXCEL

GOAL 2INFO STANDARDS

METADATA  

METADATA  

METADATA  

Put some thought to your naming convention

Never underestimate the power of a check list

GOAL 3DIGITIZATION STANDARDS

George Massenburg says: 

96 kHz, 24 bit, linear PCM files are

the minimum standard for digital

audio preservation file.

96 kHz, 24 bit, linear PCM files are

the minimum standard for digital

audio preservation file.

The International Association for Sound and Video Archives standards

96 kHz, 24 bits. 

96 kHz, 24 bits. 

GOAL 4GIVE IT TO USERS

MAKE IT A BIG DEAL

BLOG ABOUT IT

PARTNER WITH SCHOOL PROGRAMS

LINK IT TO LOCAL EVENTS

INCENTIVISE USE…SRP

WHAT I LEARNED

Associate Director, IT and Production Ann Arbor District Library

ELI NEIBERGER

http://vimeo.com/32169538

POLICYCOLLECTION DEVELOPMENT

DIGITAL ACQUISTION

ASSESMENTSubjectAge UniquenessQualityQuantity

Item is not uniqueItem is outside your acquisition policyItem is unrelated to any existing collectionItem is jacked up*

* More on preservation later

Photo from “History of the Quest Club”, SW McGill, 1948

Support from the Support from the CreatorsCreators

Support from the Support from the CreatorsCreators

Club Club Still Still

ExistsExists

Club Club Still Still

ExistsExists

Unique Unique ContentContentUnique Unique ContentContent

Great Great ConditionCondition

Great Great ConditionCondition

Dario Robleto 2002"At War With the Entropy of Nature / Ghosts Don't Always Want to Come Back"

DIGITIZATION ≠ PRESERVATION

Know this… Establish whether and when original materials can bedisposed of with confidence.

Capturing Analog Sound for Digital Preservation: Report of a Roundtable Discussion of Best Practices for Transferring Analog Discs and Tapes

DIGITIZATION ≠ PRESERVATION

Know this…

Establish a redundancy protocol for a given digital archive and for the migration of the digital archive media as well as the underlying digital archive technology

Capturing Analog Sound for Digital Preservation: Report of a Roundtable Discussion of Best Practices for Transferring Analog Discs and Tapes

DIGITIZATION ≠ PRESERVATION

Verify effectiveness of the integrity of the migration protocols including background archive soft error checking.Capturing Analog Sound for Digital Preservation: Report of a Roundtable Discussion of Best Practices for Transferring Analog Discs and Tapes

THEN WHY BOTHER?

DIGITAL PRESERVATION

Protects the information, even when the original format degrades

DIGITAL CONVERSION

Gets the information out to users- portable and easily shared

DIGITIZATION ≠ PRESERVATION

BIGLOSSLESS

OPEN SOURCE (preferably)

DIGITIZATION ≠ PRESERVATION

.WAV

Tape VaultLibrary of Congress Says:Long-term Storage(Materials having permanent value)Storage areas should be kept at a constant 45 to 50° F or colder (do not store magnetic tapes below 46° F as it may cause lubrication separation from the tape binder) and 20 to 30% RH for magnetic tapes (open reel and cassette) and 45 to 50% RH for all others. Widely fluctuating temperature or RH severely shortens the life span of all recordings. Environmental conditions shall not fluctuate more that ±5° F or ±5% RH over a 24 hour period. Store in dark areas except when being accessed, being sure to keep recordings away from UV sources (unshielded fluorescent tubes and sunlight.)

Tape VaultLibrary of Congress Says:

Don’t refrigerateDon’t let humidity fluctuateDon’t expose to UV rays, even fluorescentsAdditionally…Store in cases upright on end

   Problems encountered

Limited resources for hardwareLimited testing outside the facilityDifficulty accessing CMS from wireless networkBad timing for CONTENTdm upgradeSo much stuff, so little time

   Lessons learnedProject management

You can't always get what you want.

Empire building

Importance of tracking and documenting

   Lessons learnedThink beyond

the

PROJECTto the PROGRAM

ESTIMATES

Convert -Digitize audio from cassette tape -Collect and combine scans into single document

Describe • Technical information• Metadata

Convert Digitize audio from cassette tape to downloadable MP3.

1.Collect tape from archive2.Assign capture settings3.Capture playback digitally4.Export archive file to WAV format

5.Export patron file to MP3 format

Convert Digitize audio from cassette tape to downloadable MP3.

Time estimate: 1.5 hours per speechapproximate number of speeches in archive = 570Time to digitize cassette archive = 855 hours

Skill level: technical

Convert Digitize image scans into readable text files for download

1.Collect DVD from archive2.Copy folder to internal drive

3.Combine TIFFs into PDF4.Run text recognition software

5.Optimize PDF for web download

Convert Digitize image scans into readable text files for download

Time estimate: .25 hour per documentApproximate number of speeches in archive = 1396Time to digitize paper archive = 349 hours

Skill level: clerical

Describe •Name each file with

pertinent title•Maintain organization within the

project•Attach metadata to each object

for use in CONTENTdm•Publish compound object to

CONTENTdm and back up archived copies

Time estimate: .5 hour per documentApproximate number of speeches in archive = 1396Time to accurately describe each object = 698 hours

Skill level: Professional

Hardware Recommendations

2 2 terabyte external hard drives • $175

Cassette Deck:TASCAM CD-A750

• $630http://tascam.com/product/cd-a750/

PC Audio Interface:$250

TASCAM US-800

Software Recommendation

s•Audacity •Adobe Acrobat Pro•Microsoft Excel•CONTENTdm project manager•And hosted server

Software Recommendations

“I’m Broke and can’t afford fancy CMSs”

“My IT Department already hates me”

“Greenstone/Drupal/contentDM is beyond me”

Important Resources: Technical

Digital Collection Building• Library of Congress, "Selection Criteria for Preservation Digital

Reformatting"• Columbia University, "Selection Criteria for Digital Imaging Projects" • University of California, "Selection Criteria for Digitization" • Harvard University, "Selection for Digitization: a Decision-Making

Matrix" • National Agricultural Library, "Selection Criteria and Guidelines" • Oxford University, "Decision Matrices and Workflows"  (Appendix B) • National Library of Australia Digitisation Policy, 2000-2004.

Important Resources: OrganizationalBair, Sheila, Myung-Ja Han, and Jason Lee. (2010). Creating Metadata Best

Practices for CONTENTdm Users. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications: DC-2010, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, October 20-22, 2010, 74-78.

Campbell, Dermot, Edward Jones, and Martin Glavin. “Audio quality assessmenttechniques—A review, and recent developments.” Signal Processing 89.8(2009):1489-1500. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 21 Mar. 2011.

Council on Library and Information Resources, and Library of Congress (2006).Capturing Analog Sound for Digital Preservation: Report of a Roundtable Discussion of Best Practices for Transferring Analog Discs and Tapes. Washington, DC: Council on Library and Information Resources and Library of Congress.

Miller, Mary Helen. "The Spoken Word, Searchable for Scholarship." Chronicle of HigherEducation 56.37 (2010): A13. Professional Development Collection. EBSCO. Web. 10 Mar. 2011.

Notess, Greg R. "Searching Beyond Text: Issues with Multimedia Searching." Online 24.5 (2000): 61.Professional Development Collection. EBSCO. Web. 12 Mar. 2011.

Weig, E., Terry, K. & Lybarger, K (2007). Large scale digitization of oral history: Acase study.D-Lib Magazine 13.