Hello everyone, new member on the ARSCLIST here.
I am an undergraduate student at Columbia University researching the
history of 20th century foreign correspondents. One of the journalists I
am studying recorded his (unpublished) memoirs on a dictaphone machine in
the 1950s; the 10 dictaphone belts (and the rest of this papers) are kept
at the Hoover Institution Archives in Stanford, California. A few months
ago I sent in a duplication request to the Archives for just 1 dicatphone
belt as a test, and they just informed me that their third party vendor in
charge of duplication determined that the belt "is unplayable due to the
severity of the crease in the belt."
I am trying to figure out how to proceed and would love any advice that
audio digitization experts have. I am considering trying to send in the
rest of the belts (although this may become expensive), but all of them
have been stored in a completely flattened format (in a file folder between
two sheets of paper) , which makes me wonder if all the belts will have too
many creases to be played. What sort of steps can be taken (short or long
term) to make creased/flattened dictahone belts playable? Are there any new
alternative, digital ways of reading dictaphone belts available to a
general public (such as
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/03/us/tape-of-kennedy-s-killing-is-getting-digital-analysis.html)?
Any other suggestions for how to proceed?
Thanks
Ben Goldstein
Columbia University Class of 2020
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