O.K. I've pondered long enough, so here's my response to your questions. I'll first address issues raised in the thread, then I'll talk a little about my own archiving project and how I'm dealing with some of the issues:

Pat ... you're receiving a lot of good advice, as well as things to think about. "500 tapes" is a large project by anyone's standards. I'm doubtfull you'll be able to assemble enough "volunteers" to complete the project. The work involves hundreds of hours with heavy earphones clamped to your head, a sore bottom, and the spending of some money for materials, to say nothing of the equipment costs.

Then comes the whole subject of a final repository for the collection. Hopefully that place will include two things: an atmosheric room enviroment that will preserve the condition of the tapes and the CD's and the papers. And the other, and most important in my view, is the "mechanism" for public display and dissemination of the material.

Several years ago I had a discussion with Pete Seeger and Mark Moss about these issues. We all raised the same questions, but the conversation ended with no firm conclusions. To my knowledge, and I hope I can be corrected, no one organization yet is ready to step in and take on these tasks on a nationwide scale.

I suppose I should mention that I'm in the U.S.

Now then let me speak a little to my own project, where I'm at, and what I'm running into:

My collection is smaller than yours, 300 reel to reel (R/R) tapes, 400 cassete tapes, and maybe 100 vinyl recordings. I made about one third of the R/R's, Walt Robertson and Patti McGloughlin made the remaining two thirds.

With MY COLLECTION, it's going well and surprisingly fast. Except for the fact that I've burned up 4 tape recorders now, I'm making progress. As to the copywrite questions: I'm NOT sweating it. Most of the recordings I made are of folks now deceased. In the cases where they are still living I'm talking with them. I do have a couple of situations where I suspect the family survivors are living. I have been doing nationwide searches for these people. The LAST thing I want is for the grown son or daughter of a long deceased folksinger to be driving down the road and hear his Father singing on the air. That would be far to rude.

I've been at this seriously for about five months. One big frustration is that I still no NOT where I will place my collection when I'm done. I'm talking with some shakers and movers in the area toward a solution to this. I might contact my state senators about this.

My final archieve will look like this: Each artist will have archival quailty CD's of his music as recorded on my tapes. Each will have a bio written by me. Each artist will copies of all the personal photos I have. Every song in the total collection will be "cross indexed." That is, one section will have ALL the songs listed, alphabetically, with a reference to EVERY singer performing that song, or a close varient, and where to locate that song.

So Pat ... I hope this helps a little. I wish I had more concrete answers for you. Please feel free to contact me again with any questions and thought.

You know ... if we don't preserve the past ... how are we ever going to recognise the future. CHEERS, Bob(deckman)Nelson