The Association for Recorded Sound Collections presents the following program from its 2013 ARSC Annual Conference at Marriott Country Club Plaza, Kansas City, Missouri on Thursday May 16, 2013:

A RAPID AND NON-DESTRUCTIVE PRE-PLAYBACK TAPE DEGRADATION IDENTIFICATION METHOD
presented by Eric Breitung, Samantha Skelton, Brianna Cassidy, Lu Zhenyu, Juan Rodriguez, and Stephan Morgan, Library of Congress

The Library of Congress holds more than 750,000 magnetic tapes, many of which are degrading rapidly, and a method to identify degraded tape is needed to allow for treatment prioritization prior to copying, migrating and/or digitizing. Even in the most ideal storage conditions, tapes produced during the 1970-1990s, which often contain polyester-urethane (PEU) binders, are known to degrade.

There are no known non-destructive methods for rapidly identifying degraded magnetic tapes, and while several brands and models of tape are known to contain PEU binders, tapes are rarely held in their original packaging or even kept on original hubs, making classification by visual inspection impossible. Playing a tape is the currently accepted method for classifying it as degraded or not.

Ongoing research at the Library is assessing the capability of Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy in conjunction with multivariate statistical analysis to non-destructively and rapidly assess tape condition prior to playback.

This presentation will focus on the techniques used and the results to date for ¼” audio from the Library’s collection as well as multiple new and old stock tapes of known make and model.

Videographers: Michael and Leah Biel
Editor: Nathan Georgitis