Nearly 100,000 aging and precious recordings have been rescued from ruin by the Media Digitization and Preservation Initiative (MDPI) since it began last summer. Given that our task is to digitize approximately 280,000 audio and video recordings by the year 2020, that's good progress. We talk a lot about the importance of this preservation effort, but what does it look like? At our 50,000-item milestone, Audio Preservation Engineer Melissa Widzinski took a look around and shared what she found.

As of January 13, 2016, MDPI has digitized 50,000 items since the start of production last summer! This project reflects a partnership between the large-scale parallel transfer workflows of Memnon, a Sony company, and the one-to-one transfer workflows for more delicate items by the Indiana University team. On any given operational day at MDPI, IU staff is digitizing items in two audio preservation studios and one video preservation studio. Memnon staff is conducting parallel digitization in their open-reel tape room, digital audio tape (DAT) room, four LP digitization rooms, and video digitization room.

To mark this milestone, we are taking a snapshot that includes all of the recordings digitized in the facility on this day at 11 AM. (There is no way to mark which particular item was the 50,000th since a large number of recordings are in the digitization process at any given time.)

We will start by taking a look at the IU video preservation studio, where we are working on a Hi-8 tape from the Archives of Traditional Music. The tape is from a collection donated by Richard Wolf, a professor of Ethnomusicology at Harvard. It is part of the collection of tapes he made during his field research in India and Pakistan. This particular tape was recorded on December 2, 1999, and features a demonstration of instruments for a music class.

In the IU audio preservation studios, we are working with 16” lacquer discs from 1945-1951. In one studio, we are transferring a disc from the IU Founders’ Day Celebration on May 4, 1949. Each disc side is only approximately 15 minutes in duration, so to capture the entire ceremony, seven disc sides were cut. During this ceremony, speeches were given by IU President Herman B Wells, Indiana Governor Henry Schricker, and Studebaker Corporation President Paul G. Hoffman. This particular disc side features performances by the Chancel Choir, conducted by Professor George Krueger.

In the other audio preservation studio, we are digitizing a 16” lacquer disc from the Indiana School of the Sky. This is a series of educational radio shows for school-age children, broadcast during school days from 1947 through 1951. Created, performed, and recorded by IU students, the series covers a range of topics, including science, history, music, art, and storytelling. This particular disc, titled “Cold Lands,” is part of the social studies series and was broadcast on December 2, 1947.

The four Memnon LP digitization studios each contain four turntables for digitizing vinyl LPs in a parallel workflow. On this day, we are digitizing discs from the Archives of African American Music and Culture. Genres range from blues and classical to disco and R & B.

The Memnon open-reel digitization room contains eight open-reel tape machines that are running simultaneously. Today, half of the machines are playing tapes from the Archives of Traditional Music, containing spoken word from Kenya recorded in 1975. These tapes were made by John Berntsen and include interviews with various prophets and leaders among the semi-nomadic Maasai people concerning the relation of religious and political power. The other half of the open-reel transfer studio is running tapes from the Music Library, containing piano recitals from the Jacobs School of Music recorded in 1964. These four tapes were recorded on Sarkes-Tarzian tape, which was branded right here in Bloomington, Indiana.

In the next room, seven digital audio tapes (DATs) are playing at once. These DATs are from the Music Library and contain performances of The Bartered Bride, an opera that took place at the Musical Arts Center on IU Bloomington’s campus in 1974. Finally, in the Memnon video transfer room, there are twelve Betacam SP tapes being transferred simultaneously. The content is mostly news break packages from WTIU. All of this represents a typical mix of content, genres, and formats from the Indiana University collections that are digitized on any given day. This was fun – I pledge to get out of my studio and walk around more often!