I'm looking for advice or direction to advice on care of cassette tapes, their longevity and issues on digitisation, many thanks.
The general advice is to keep cassettes upright (not lying flat), cool, dry and away from sources of magnetic fields or heat. Think about electric motors which generate magnetic fields (such as vacuum cleaners) and remember that sources of heat include lights and windows. So please don't put boxes of tapes on top of cupboards near lightbulbs or on low shelves near the floor (and therefore the vacuum cleaner).
Keep the tapes in a clean environment and protect them from dust and mould. Wipe boxes clean with microfibre cloths.
Handle them carefully. Try to keep temperature and humidity stable. If the conditions in the store are different from the area where they will be played, allow them to acclimatise in the box for several hours before taking them out.
Do not rewind tapes after playing them - play them to the end and rewind them just before playing.
Make sure the tape heads are clean before playing. Rewind slowly. Do not fast forward.
The US Library of Congress has a good factsheet http://www.loc.gov/preservation/care/record.html
There are some useful illustrations and examples in the National Media Library 1995 report http://www.imaginar.org/dppd/DPPD/126%20pp%20Magnetic%20Tape%20Storage.pdf
The British Library Preservation Advisory Service has very useful booklets on caring for archive collections generally http://www.bl.uk/blpac/publicationsleaf.html
I haven't checked out the factsheets quoted, so perhaps they already cover the issue of having the technology to play back the cassettes that you are storing. Having the software needed to access old digital media let alone the equipment needed to play cassettes, vinyl and floppy discs is not something museums are very good at.
ReplyDeleteIt is relatively easy to copy a cassette to CD without loosing quality. Just make sure you have the protocols in place to ensure you can continue to read the CD! This is relevant to collections and also to a museum's adminitrative record.
This is very helpful. Cassette tapes are really starting to be a vintage item, which is attracting a lot of attention for collectors. Of course it’s also good to keep them for posterity’s sake. Haha! One good way to keep them is arranging them inside media vaults.
ReplyDeleteRuby Badcoe