Digital Recordings at Risk -- No Matter How You Store Them, Copy Every Ten Years

A decade-long study released by the Library of Congress last month raises concerns about storage of audio files in the digital age. Digital files, scholars point out, do not survive unless someone saves them. Computer files that are recorded and stored ONLY on the Internet are at risk for not being saved -- those files are in danger of being lost forever. Although the Library of Congress study focused on sound files, video files are likely also at risk.

Even computerized files that are saved somewhere are still at risk of being lost forever in a different way -- they may not be archived or indexed in a format that is searchable, or findable, later. In that case, digital files can be lost without being destroyed -- lost to obscurity. The solution, say professional archivists, is the same no matter whether you are preserving historical recordings in a library, or saving family records and files at home. Make many copies of files that you want to save, put those copies in several locations rather than saving them all in the same place -- and recopy the files again every ten years or so.

“Consider this,” NPR’s Tom Cole wrote on his blog this week. “The 1951 recording of "How High the Moon" by Les Paul and Mary Ford — made on the then-new medium of reel-to-reel tape — has a better chance of being around and being heard in 2151 than this year's Hope for Haiti Now — an MP3-only release featuring performances by Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, and Beyonce, among many others, that's not available for purchase anymore.”

Library of Congress archivists began to advocate a study of the preservation of sound recordings after hearing many disturbing anecdotes about recordings that were made late in the twentieth century, stored only digitally, and subsequently lost. The study began in 2000, after Congress passed The National Recording Preservation Act of 2000 (Public Law 106-474). The law established the National Recording Preservation Board of the Library of Congress and also set up a National Recording Registry. The study was completed in August with sobering results.

“Major areas of America’s recorded sound heritage have already been destroyed or remain inaccessible to the public,” writes Librarian of Congress James H. Billington in the study’s introduction. Study authors Rob Bamberger and Sam Brylawski warn that without a coordinated effort to copy and preserve sound recordings, many more audio files will probably be lost forever.

“Master recordings,” Bamberger and Brylawski note, “are now more often in the possession of the original artists than they used to be. Many of these recordings are at risk because they are not being properly stored.”

The Library of Congress itself has been making efforts to update its facilities in order to store and preserve sound and audiovisual recordings. The Packard Humanities Institute donated $200 million to the Library of Congress in 2007, to pay for the construction of the new Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation.

Librarians and archivists have several problems to solve if they are to preserve sound and audiovisual recordings for generations to come:

• Sometimes not even the creator of an audio or video file has saved a copy -- sometimes the file is simply streamed live to the Internet and then then lost.
• Files are recorded using software that will not exist forever, as software continually becomes obsolete as new updates are written or as new programs become popular and replace the old ones.
• CDs, CDRs, and CDRWs degrade over time. So do DVDs and DVD-RWs. They do not last as long as old tape recordings do. While old recordings on tape may last up to 150 years if they are stored carefully, many CDs will last only ten. (“Paradoxically,” Brylawski told NPR this week, “newer tape has less of a shelf life than older tape.”)
• Likewise, digital files become corrupt over time.
• Currently, no universities offer degree programs to train audio and audiovisual recording archivists, although a few offer courses in audio preservation.
• Copyright laws that prohibit the copying of audio and audiovisual files are contributing to the loss of many files. It is fortunate, write Bamberger and Brylawski, that copyright laws are not strictly enforced. “Were the law strictly enforced,” they say, “it would brand virtually all audio preservation as illegal.”

What do Bamberger and Brylawski recommend? The recommendation is the same, whether you are a librarian, archivist, or a parent trying to hold onto copies of a video made of a child’s soccer game or ballet recital. Brylawski told NPR, “preservationists have a neat little word they use called LOCKSS, Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe. And it really doesn’t matter -- there’s no single recommended way, hard drive or CR-R or other backup tape, but you just should have several of them....what you do is you make a few copies and you put them in different places.” Once you’ve made the copies, Brylawski says, put copying the recordings on your calendar -- you should copy them again in ten years, because the original copies will degrade.

Sources used:

Cole, Tom. “Who will save America’s vanishing songs?” NPR Music blog. Sept. 29, 2010.

Library of Congress, National Recording Preservation Board. “The state of recorded sound preservation in the United States: a national legacy at risk in the digital age.” August 2010.

“Sounds of history ‘at great risk,’ say US researchers.” BBC News. Sept. 30, 2010.

“Storing treasured memories on CD may be risky.” NPR. Sept. 30, 2010.