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How do you transport over 140 pounds of supplies and equipment to Cuba to digitize nearly 70 year-old radio broadcasts that were recorded on an extremely fragile format, without the luxury of shipping services and limited Internet access at your destination for troubleshooting?
Research. Planning. More planning. And developing some mad roadie packing skills. This February I traveled with a group of UCLA Library staff to the Instituto de Historia de Cuba (IHC) in Havana, Cuba where I set up equipment and held a training workshop on the transfer of 16” radio transcription discs for UCLA Library’s International Digital Ephemera Project. Audiovisual preservationists routinely have to develop workflows to digitize long obsolete audio and moving image formats. This involves learning how a format was originally manufactured, recorded, and played. One of the most challenging audio formats we’ve had to digitize this past year has been radio transcription discs, a type of lacquer disc(opens in a new tab) historically used to record radio broadcasts. Lacquer discs look similar to vinyl discs but are exceptionally fragile. Their unstable nitrocellulose coatings are prone to cracking and delamination, which occurs when the recording surface starts to shed in pieces. What made this project even more challenging was that we would have to carry every last supply we needed by hand because of the United States economic embargo, from custom-made styli to a water distillation unit. Additionally, with limited internet and cellular access on-site, troubleshooting was going to be a challenge, so before our trip I spoke with a number of seasoned colleagues to be as prepared as possible for different variables.
IHC’s collection of radio broadcasts consists of approximately 1600 transcription discs. The first collection they chose to transfer is Universidad del Aire (University of the Air), an educational radio show that aired in Cuba between 1949–1960. Each episode presented a different topic or discipline, showcasing Cuban intellectuals and cultural figures. The program was supplemented with a printed magazine, Cuadernos del Universidad del Aire, that was issued monthly and was available for purchase by listeners of the show. The IHC has been digitizing copies of these Cuadernos to complement the digitized recordings. Three issues that were missing from their collection exist in UCLA Library’s collections, so we have been able to provide digital copies towards the project. For now, the priority is transferring recordings that don’t have significant surface loss. Common issues being tackled are particulate contamination caused by dust, dirt and fragments of old brittle paper sleeves that were once used to house the discs, as well as exuded plasticizer deposits, which are a white greasy, crystalline byproduct of the deteriorating plastic coating. Discs with significant delamination present a much larger challenge and we will be concentrating on recovering what we can during future visits this year.
For more information please check out the digitized collection of IHC's Universidad del Aire recordings on the IDEP website here(opens in a new tab).