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Hi Julie,

This is from the LOC website:
http://www.loc.gov/preserv/care/record.html


Cheers!

Corey
Corey Bailey Audio Engineering


At 09:25 AM 12/6/2010, you wrote:
>Thanks, Tom! I really appreciate your suggestions. This is an 
>archival collection, so like most archival collections, it would not 
>circulate beyond our reading room.
>
>I would really love to get some input from archivists on the list, too.
>
>Julie
>
>________________________________________
>From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List 
>[[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Tom Fine [[log in to unmask]]
>Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 5:48 AM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Cleaning Vinyl Records
>
>Hi Julie:
>
>One man's opinions here, but a man with a lot of records ...
>
>1. As for cleaning, YES, do so, before playing any of them, and do 
>not circulate them (ie let
>"common folks" play them). Spring for CD versions of the material, 
>if it's in print, to circulate.
>Figure out some way to make the rest of it available in-house only. 
>So, for a cleaning system for a
>small collection, I really like the SpinClean:
>http://tinyurl.com/24yvewn
>
>Why? Because it's easy to use and doesn't cost a fortune. Perfect 
>for a small collection and nothing
>exotic, strange or sophisticated to learn.
>
>2. As for the sleeves, just wipe them off with a clean cloth. If 
>there's mold, there's not much you
>can do about it except keep them dry and keep the moldy ones 
>isolated from the rest by keeping all
>of them in plastic jacket-cover sleeves.
>
>3. After cleaning the records, I recommend you replace the inner 
>sleeves. I like Sleeve City because
>it tends to be a little less costly:
>http://sleevetown.com/
>but Bags Unlimited makes fine products too:
>http://www.bagsunlimited.com
>I like the "rice paper" plastic kind. The cheapo paper ones I don't 
>recommend. The heavy paper ones
>I really don't recommend for LPs as it's very easy to do some 
>serious scratching just putting the LP
>into the sleeves.
>
>4. From either of those sources, also get plastic jacket covers. 
>That isolates whatever is going on
>with one jacket from the surrounding jackets (besides mold, some 
>jackets are made of more or less
>acidic cardboard than others, so some brown out over time while 
>others don't). Some on this list
>will say, store the inner sleeved record outside the jacket within 
>the plastic sleeve (so as not to
>put any warping edge-stress on the record). That's good advice, 
>although my experience is that most
>records fit in most jackets with room to spare if you take the time 
>to slide the inner sleeves in
>carefully.
>
>5. For storing the records, both Sleeve City and Bags Unlimited sell 
>archival LP storage boxes. I've
>had good luck with Bags' plastic-ized corrogated boxes, but beware 
>SHARP edges!
>
>Records are really neat artifacts, but they fall right apart if 
>handled by unskilled hands. Public
>use is a non-starter since probably everything you got is out of 
>print and there's some degree of
>cost and effort to replacing it. There was a whole business model 
>back in the day built around the
>fact that people wore out records, from both rough handling and 
>junky playback equipment. One
>argument made for the higher cost of CD's was that they wouldn't 
>wear out, which of course is not
>true since they can get scratched or finger-printed to the point of 
>non-playability. I advise
>archive clients not to circulate any out of print CDs, rather use 
>CDR copies for in-house-only
>listening. This would be much less of an issue if the commercial 
>music business were healthy and
>most CD titles were readily available and in-print, but that's not 
>the case anymore.
>
>-- Tom Fine
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Grob, Julie" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Saturday, December 04, 2010 6:22 PM
>Subject: [ARSCLIST] Cleaning Vinyl Records
>
>
>Hi audio experts,
>
>I have acquired a small collection of vinyl records from the 1980s 
>and 1990s for our archive. What
>is the best low-tech way to clean the covers and the records 
>themselves? They are quite dusty...
>stored in a garage.
>
>Sincerely,
>Julie Grob
>
>Julie Grob
>Digital Projects & Instruction Librarian
>Special Collections
>114 University Libraries
>Houston, TX 77204-2000
>Ph: 713-743-9744
>Fax: 713-743-9893