EBarnacle,

Does this mean that you will send copies to others for their archives?

Not exactly. Over the years I've acquired a very large record collection, mainly of location and field recordings of traditional music and song from all over the planet. This includes a lot of radio broadcasts which I nowadays store in MP3 of course. Unfortunately, in years gone by, the only storage medium available was the good old sticking, jamming, hiss laden and liable to break at any minute cassette. So I've got hundreds of cassettes of everything from English farmworkers to East Asian zither players.

I don't want to see the colletcion broken up when I'm no longer here to enjoy it and, since it's a potentially a useful resource for future music students, I've willed the whole lot to the Institute of Popular Music at Liverpool University. Partly so that I can find stuff for my own purposes, and partly so that people will be able to use it once it's bequeathed, I am slowly cataloguing it in as much detail as is practical.

When I start digitising the cassettes, which is the next "phase" of the operation, then I'll be in a position to make copies for people with a genuine interest in the material. The problem is that the floodgates keep opening and deluging me in great piles of new records. So it's a bit like painting the Forth bridge.