An interesting thread that I'm observing from the UK.

With regard to copyright, the UK situation is a little better. If it can be shown that significant effort has been made to contact the contributor, then the recordings can be made available. Thus, well known people won't be ripped off and unidentified 'open mike' singers (or equivalent) can be dealt with retrospectively if they subsequently turn up.

With regard to Bob's comments on equipment, I have several original machines that were donated with their collection of tapes. However, using them is not always the best way forward. The electronics will be 'of their time' and using more modern electronics will often get more off the tape. In addition, the ability to address technical issues like head height, azimuth, etc. is quite important. I have several digital files that need doing again because the digitizer didn't address these issues. Work horses like Nagra, Revox, Studer etc. are still expensive to buy but they are the archivist's favorite, at least over here.

Pat, I'm assuming and hoping you haven't got tape issues like oxide shedding or at the extreme end of the problem scale, 'vinegar syndrome'. These things will obviously amend the methodology.

There are also issues to be address with the digital file formats which I won't go into unless someone's specifically interested.

Then there's the metadata and this is the killer!!

At Leeds University (UK) there is a large collection of recordings made by folklore students a couple of decades ago. After the degree was closed down, the paper catalogue was THROWN AWAY during a clear out rendering the collection near to useless for real research.

Any metadata that exists should be carefully preserved and when digitization takes place the metadata should be included in the digital file whenever possible.

Where metadata doesn't exist or is sparse, then the gathering of new data is a project in itself as has been suggested somewhere in the thread. I'm hoping to do it with an online system but while waiting for the opportunity to set it up, two of my chief informants have died.

With regard to who does the job, we were lucky in that the UK National Lottery coughed up the cash to do the actual digitizing. This took 18 months and was completed before I took over the archive. Had I been in at the beginning I would have insisted that the digitizing staff had the benefit of better technical training. You only want to do the job ONCE.

The digitizer noted metadata as the transfers went along but the quality of this was variable as he only knew what he knew and missed lots of potentially useful information. That part of the job now has to be completed with repeat playings. It's good to think about your strategy for optimal metadata collection.

Sorry about the length of this post. I'm done now except to say that I'm probably just about to start another rash of digitizing, working on the tapes of fiddlers and banjo players that Janet Kerr recorded in West Virginia etc. in the 1970s. This will likely turn up its own set of issues.