A Small Aside About Preserving Our Collection

So far, we’ve been focusing on some background information about the folk music that makes up the R. Neuwirth Special Collection of American Roots Music. While this blog is focused on sharing our love of traditional American music, we thought that our readers might be interested in learning a little more about what goes into preserving and maintaining our collections.

While we have taken some steps towards digitizing our collection of American folk music, this is separate from our role as preservers of the original vinyl artifacts themselves. Digitization has its place, but it is not the same as ensuring that the actual records themselves are cared for so that future generations have access to them. Our collection includes many rare records that we have been entrusted with, and it is up to us to take the best possible care of them, regardless of whether or not the content has been preserved digitally.

Without getting too technical, and keeping in mind that there is still a great deal of work to be done by research libraries and archives in determining what the best ways to take care of collections like ours are, here are some of the things we do with the amazing collection we have been given the opportunity to appreciate, preserve and share with the world. The first thing we do is make sure that we keep our collection in an environment with a controlled temperature and humidity. The temperature is more important than the humidity, and we keep our collection stored at 65-70 degrees Fahrenheit. In order to prevent the discs from warping, the albums are stored vertically, with spacers every four to six inches. We keep our collection on metal shelves, which don't warp the way wood shelves can. Only people who have been properly trained are allowed to handle the records, and then they are required to where white lint-free gloves. Any record which is played is generally cleaned with distilled water and a soft cloth immediately after being played. Some of our rarer and more fragile records are only made available to the public in the form of a copied recording.

These are not all of the steps that we take, and we are constantly learning new things about how to best take care of these cultural treasures, but they hopefully have given you an idea about what goes into maintaining our collection.

Links:

Audio Preservation: A great collection of links about preserving audio materials

Association of Research Libraries Guide to Sound Recording Media

Wikipedia on Preserving Vinyl Records