Case Study 1
United States Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Virginia
Archive centers do not come bigger than this one. The Library of Congress holds the nation’s largest public collection of sound recordings containing music, spoken word and radio broadcasts, nearly 3.5 million recordings in all. Over 110 years of sound recordings history is represented in nearly every audio format, from cylinders to CDs, covering a wide range of subjects and genres in considerable depth and breadth. LOC has been investing in Merging equipment since 2007 and now have 12 Pyramix systems and numerous Horus and Hapi units. Merging worked closely with technicians from LOC to develop the Metadata editor which is a very valuable addition to the essential feature list for archival.
Case Study 2
National Library of Norway
The National Library is in a special position, as it is both a national audio archive and also the music industry archive in Norway. This includes all the mastertape collections from labels, artists and studios. The preservation studio is a department called Lydlaboratoriet (audiolab), and consists of 10 audio engineers all running Pyramix workstations. There is a plethora of formats including analog tape, various digital tape formats (including multitrack), CD, vinyl, and can include more specialized transfers and work related to re-editions of unique recordings. Our “biggest scale” project is transferring DAT logging tapes from NRK (the national broadcast company), where one technician is running two Pyramix workstations, recording, editing, naming and transferring almost 200 hours of audio each day (working 7.5 hours a day).
Thomas Bårdsen, Production Manager Audio Preservations, observed; “As this collection totals some 400,000hours, this really helps. I do not think any of the more dedicated archive workstations would be able to cope with the speed and channel numbers like that.”