Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1512678
80 W I N T E R 2 0 2 4 I C A S Q U A R T E R L Y After having conducted interviews on the subject and thinking about it for a while, it seems to me there are various ways of looking at what "restoration of audio recordings" actually means. Here, I'm going to discuss two; one as the documentarian or archivist thinks about it, and the other as an exhibitor might think about it. These two ideas could not be farther apart in aural approach due to their completely different audiences, each with divergent expectations. Not to mention that the heyday of the equipment used to achieve these approaches is literally separated by decades of time; absolute oceans of time in terms of the audio technologies involved. I was lucky enough to be put in touch with Bruce Gordon, an audio engineer who archives material for the Harvard Library Media Preservation Service, a unit of the Harvard Library system that is held in extremely high regard both for its painstaking practices and its media storage systems. According to their website: "Obsolescence and the deterioration of the carrier formats contribute to a much shorter lifespan for [recorded] materials than paper-based collections. Media Preservation maintains the professional playback equipment, as well as the expertise necessary to safely handle and transfer a wide range of media formats with optimal results." Following are excerpts from our discussion on the topic. of Audio Recordings Restoration b y P a t r i c k S p a i n C A S