Review of Preservation and Storage of Sound Recordings [Part 1]

Abstract

Those of us who take full advantage of the Electronic Age by doing most or all of our folklore field collecting with a tape recorder must sometimes remind ourselves that at one time a field worker's sole transcription tools were a notebook and a pencil. It is true that mechanical recording has been used in field collecting for over sixty years, dating from the period of the introduction of the cylinder phonograph. The poor quality of reproduction and the difficulty in handling this equipment caused many collectors to stick to their notebooks and pencils. However, the development of somewhat simpler (although still cumbersome) recording equipment in the early 19309s, and the large scale recording trips sponsored by the Archive of American Folk Song of the Library of Congress, beginning in 1933, impelled more and more collectors to turn to mechanical transcription. With the appearance, during the 1944's, of wire and tape recording processes, transcription by hand became largely a thing of the pas t