Preserving the Audio Archive The material on the LCAAJ audio
tapes is unique. The field notes focus solely on selected
linguistic features in the informant's responses and the tapes
have not been transcribed, except for a selection included in
the EYDES project. The wealth of information that the tapes
contain thus resides solely on a fragile and aging medium. The
5,755 hours of recording in the LCAAJ are stored on some 2,600
reels of tape produced in various countries between 1959 and
1972. The tapes were recorded at a variety of speeds under
widely varying conditions. More than twenty different brands and
sizes of tape stock have been used, including both acetate- and
polyester-backed tape, and there are even thirteen hours of wire
recordings. As is all too sadly known, acetate tape (used
through the late 1960s) is a very impermanent medium for the
recording of sound. Manufacturers' claims, and real-time
experience indicate, that twenty years is the average functional
life for such tapes. They begin to suff