Providing Access to Research Sound Collections – “Quick and Dirty” or Highest Quality?

Providing access to research sound collections in the digital age is a challenge of various kinds. The paper focuses on the problems related to the digitisation of material archived and structured on analogue archival copies. On the digitisation process, it is beneficial to go back to the original tapes to provide the best technical quality possible. But what does this mean in a practical workflow? Using examples of recent re-archiving projects at the Phonogrammarchiv, the following topics are outlined – starting with the acquisition and analysis of the original tapes, the contribution discusses the problems of re-archiving and segmentation, dealing with various differently structured copies, as well as technical and ethical issues around maintaining integrity and authenticity of the material. The challenge can be handled effectively through a strong teamwork between curators and technicians, but it is likely to lead to some surprises.