Sound Savings: Preserving Audio Collections is a compendium of papers that were presented at the symposium of the same name held in Austin, Texas, July 24–26, 2003. The symposium was co-sponsored by the School of Information, Preservation and Conservation Studies, University of Texas at Austin, the Library of Congress (LC), the National Recording Preservation Board, and the Association of Research Libraries. For two-and-a-half days, experts on many facets of audio preservation gave presentations on topics ranging from assessing the preservation needs of audio collections to creating, preserving, and making digitized audio available to the public. The attendees came from across the United States, and most represented audio collections housed in universities and colleges. They came seeking information on how to best deal with the deteriorating tapes and lacquer discs that have become a part of almost every institution housing a large sound archive. I attended the symposium representing the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey and found the gathering very helpful at the time. Reading the papers five years later, I was struck by how much from that symposium is still relevant today.

“Review of Audio Collection Preservation Trends and Challenges” was presented by Samuel Brylawski, at the time head of the Recorded Sound Section of the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division of LC. He talks about the death of analog preservation methods and the adoption of digital formats to preserve audio. He goes on to talk about digital repositories and mentions LC’s creation of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpepper, Virginia. Of course, today that facility is now up and running. Brylawski proposes collaboration with other institutions as a way to ensure that the vast amount of audio material held in the different archives will be digitized and stresses how these “archives should be exploring legal, as well as technical, methods to collaborate on preservation projects and share the products of those projects” (25). He mentions that Congress has charged the Library of Congress with building the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) to help provide the legal and technical blueprint for institutions looking to establish legal means to share files as well as establish and administer storage and server networks. NDIIPP currently has more than ninety partners in its growing digital preservation network, which includes institutions both in the United States and abroad.

The chapter “Surveying Sound Recording Collections” by Hannah Frost provides a very useful guide to documenting audio collections and offers advice on how to proceed in preserving collections. Five years later, this paper is still useful for those doing a survey of their collections with the intent of launching a preservation program.

“Risk Reduction through Pre-ventive Care, Handling, and Storage” by Alan F. Lewis is yet another chapter that holds up today. In it Lewis first lays out what he calls some “basic training,” surveying the basic elements involved in machine-based audiovisual recording systems. Using laymen’s language, he talks about audio recordings (or as he calls it the “stuff on the shelf”), the playback equipment, and the standards developed as a part of the invention of the system. After a brief discussion on the components of a typical audio recording medium, he launches into his “Nineteen Conservation Concerns.” Without listing every concern, I can attest that such things as environment, physical security, and fire and water protection, are of great concern to any audio archive.