Blog topic: Digitization

Part of audio preservation work includes working with media that has peculiar characteristics. Sometimes the atypical qualities are a byproduct of how the recording was made by the recordist. An example of this type of problem that we occasionally see at the Stanford Media Preservation Lab is when an open reel tape is recorded over and there is remaining content hidden in certain spots of the tape. This presents specific problems in capture since tape heads are built for use with specific physical configurations of tracks and thus capturing the hidden spots outside of the normal range of track configuration is near impossible. With this in mind SMPL recently worked on obtaining equipment to address this challenging scenario.

[This was originally posted on the blog "Free Government Information"] I thought I'd recount an interesting little research question I had yesterday that took me down a rabbit hole trying to answer. This student was looking for an edition of a 1913 publication called the "Immigration Laws and Rules" (WorldCat helpfully notes the uniform titles of "Laws, etc." and "Immigration Laws"!) but couldn’t find the right one in google books (go figure!).

The University Archives is pleased to announce that it has digitized a remarkable manuscript, "Carry On," written by James M. Robb ('31), a WWII POW who survived the Bataan Death March. The manuscript, written while Robb was a patient at the Bilibid prison-hospital in the Philippines, was buried in a canister under floorboards in a building in the prison by Warrant Officer Earl G. Schweizer, who is referred to often in the manuscript and who was apparently a good friend of James's in the camp.