While I am not an AMIA member--nor an archivist for that matter--I find your discussions here quite interesting, so I have been lurking silently on your listserv for several years.
This past week, however, I received a package that leads me to seek your collective advice, if you would be so kind.
My cousin sent me a 1/4" reel to reel audio tape which is at least 40 years old that she would
like to have converted to CD. The tape is an interview with her father that was broadcast on WABC-AM in NY and is the only known recording of his voice. The date of the interview is unknown, but he died in 1965 when she was 14, so the tape is a precious commodity.
I have all the equipment with which to convert the recording to a CD, but I am a little nervous about trying to play a tape of this age. Before I try, I thought I would ask you whether it would be advisable for me to even attempt it. The tape looks fine, but I would hate to damage it if your experience suggests that the tape itself would be fragile.
So what is your advice? Is the tape likely to hold up to the tension of being played? Or is this something I should turn over to a professional?
In the same package, my cousin also sent me a reel of film. It was not a home movie
as I anticipated, but a commercial film that her father had picked up in Germany during--or, possibly, immediately following--WWII.
I have not attempted to view it, as I am unsure of its condition. There is no odor or stickiness about it; to my untrained eye, it appears in perfectly good condition. I am not a film person, so I cannot tell for certain what the gauge is, but I suspect it 8mm (would that be what German's would have had in their homes back then?).
There was a printed sheet in the box with the reel. Apparently the film is Degeto-Weltspiegel Nr. 18 entitled "Der Einzug in Paris" which I take to be a newsreel of the German armed forces in Paris.
I imagine my uncle picked this up in Germany as a souvenir of the war. I doubt that it holds any particular meaning to our family.
Can anyone tell
me anything about this particular film? Would there be any archive interested in having it?
Any advice or information on either matter would be most appreciated.
Thank you.
Michael Raff
Richmond, VA