Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Some Assembly Required: Low-Cost Digitization Of Materials From Magnetic Tape Formats For Preservation And Access, Brandon Welch, Annie Oelschlager, Sarah Cain, Drew E. Vandecreek

Faculty Peer-Reviewed Publications

Recent work discussing the digitization and preservation ofmagnetic tapematerials hasmaintained that it should be left to expert practitioners and that the resulting digital materials should be stored in digital repositories. This article suggests that librarians and archivists lacking extensive technical skills or access to expertise can digitize these materials themselves. It provides a detailed account, including challenges faced, of how a team of practitioners without prior training or experience digitized historical audio recordings on cassette and open reel tape at Northern Illinois University Libraries. The discussion reviews the assembly of equipment and software that the team used for digitization work, …