Determining the Composition of 78-rpm Records: Challenge or Fantasy?

摘要

The National Library of France – the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) – is host-ning a three-year research programme focusing on preserving audiovisual and multime-ndia documents. The results should help defne and guide the preservation policy for the nAudiovisual Department. Starting in 2007, the research programme is looking at the ncomposition of 78-rpm records. These discs, considered to be “stable,” are in fact little nunderstood, and there are no guarantees as to their long-term preservation – some deg-nradation can in fact already be seen in the BnF collection, one of the largest in the world nwith about 300,000 items. The research programme thus has a clear goal of anticipating nand preventing damage; it should give an idea of when problems are likely to arise in the npreservation of the discs, and the best way to respond.