About ten years ago I got a box full of tapes on loan from Hood College. The tapes dated to the mid-sixties and were on the original small reels. Just try to find a reel-to-reel player nowadays!
So I took them to a local audio place, basically a one man shop, some tech-head with a lot of gadgetry. He charged me about a dollar per minute of tape time to digitize and burn to CD, and led me to believe it was a bargain rate. Which it probably was.
Anyway I bit the bullet and got it done. I'm very glad I did essential to the work then underway, and afterward a permanent record of stuff that would have been forever lost.
Around the same time, I was conducting many many interviews. Most were by telephone, recorded on cassette tapes on a clunky old phone answering machine. Later I was able to digitize these myself (still a project in progress, in fact). Did it for the same reason: I see the value and want to preserve.
Some of you may know that a guy name Clay Ogilvie undertook a similar task at Hood College. He digitized some, most, or all of Harold Weisberg's vast collection of stuff for the most part, hard copy, but essentially the same thing.
I know a little something of how Clay worked, and I suggest the same thing for the Assassination Journal. To wit (and yes, this is really obvious), the slow and steady approach. A little bit at a time over a long period. With an estimated 150 90-minute tapes, it could probably be done at minimal out-of-pocket expense within a year or so, if one took a methodical approach.
When I digitized cassettes I used a very old Fostex multi-track tape player, directional. The important thing of course is that a "line out" feature is required. Not a rare feature by any means, but more than you'd probably find on an inexpensive cassette player. I connect to the computer with a common mini-plug.
By the way, I never had the privilege of hearing the Assassination Journal, but I'm assuming it originated at a public radio station with a shoestring budget. So this station isn't a likely underwriter for such a project.
I wonder if anyone has an association of any kind with a university whose resources could be used for this? A library or media center with a decent audio/computer connection? Baylor University has done some digitizing in its Penn Jones archive. It has already been noted in this thread that there is no existing archive to be trusted with this stuff. But if there were physical resources not far from where the tapes are now, and this source could be exploited...well, that would be the best solution, no?
I'm sorry to be so wordy here. I'm just trying to demonstrate that, from personal experience, professional places are expensive. With minimal technical know-how, though, it could be done very cheaply, and with acceptable quality.
Charles Drago Wrote:Thanks again, Jerry.
Right now my thinking is to engage a professional studio to do the job. But all possibilities are open to discussion.
I'll keep all interested parties informed.
