Archiving and Preservation Information Resources 

The Stanford CoOL (Conservation On Line) site has many resources.

In particular, read Gilles St-Laurent’s 1996 article on The Care and Handling of Recorded Sound Materials.

University of Washington Audio Preservation and Restoration by John R. Gibbs.

The IASA “Green Book” TC-04 Guidelines on the Production and Preservation of Digital Audio Objects can be purchased from IASA.

The National Recording Preservation Board of the Library of Congress and the Council on Library and Information Resources March 2006 Capturing Analog Sound for Digital Preservation: Report of a Roundtable Discussion of Best Practices for Transferring Analog Discs and Tapes

Valerie Forrestal’s http://www.audioarchiving.net/ is a great bibliographic resource on preservation reformatting.

Henry Wilhelm’s Wilhelm Imaging Research site also has his landmark 1993 book The Permanence and Care of Color Photographs: Traditional and Digital Color Prints, Color Negatives, Slides, and Motion Pictures available as an 80 MB PDF. I’ve had the book since it first came out.

Useful film and video tools: Scene Savers, Cincinnati

Oral History Links 

Andy Kolovos’s Audio Field Recording Equipment Guide at the Vermont Folklife Center, Vermont

Susan A. Kitchen’s new site “Family oral history using digital tools” at http://familyoralhistory.us/ 

California State University at Fullerton, Center for Oral and Public History, California

Heritage Recording in England 

Tape Heads, Recorder Maintenance 

John French at JRF Magnetic Sciences — Tape heads, rebuilding, special projects, New Jersey

Joe Dundovic’s Magnetic Head Company — A wide selection of tape heads, Minnesota 

Jay McKnight’s Magnetic Reference Lab — Audio test tapes, information resource (on original Watergate tape panel), California

John Austin at Sprague Magnetics — Tape heads, tape recorder parts, California

Precision European Hand Tools for Studer (and other) maintenace.

Video Format Information 

Tim Stoffel’s Quadruplex Park Web site — Video tape format information (links at bottom of page), Nevada

Miscellaneous Audio Information

Rick Chinn’s Uneeda Audio site has an eclectic collection of useful audio information once you start digging into the arcane details. This includes things like pads, phantom power, M-S recording, and even how to solder artfully!

Rane has an excellent technical library on their website. It is worth a long browse. I especially recommend their interconnection guide.