Thanks all for the stimulating discussion, and may we all end up with a solution at the other end of the tunnel.

May I clear up a couple of misunderstandings, perhaps based on hasty reading. First of all (again) I did not and do not intend to suggest anything could be, or ought to be "authoritative." Where did that come from?

Nor did I did hold up the Digitrad as a perfect archive. Of course it has errors and omissions. So does The...woops. The point is, we are not looking for perfection!!! Can't emphasize that enough.

On the contrary. We are looking for approximation toward a goal. That's all it needs to be. Please don't anyone get hung up on some superfluous idea about value judgments as to what a perfect archive should be, because there can be no such thing.

Any archive is better than none. Digitrad has shown that an archive built by all of us can be pretty damn good. It's certainly a good enough example to serve as the blueprint for a possible equivalent made up of sound recordings.

Have I laid that false argument to rest, I hope?