Jeff Place's Letter to the Carter Fold Board

----- Original Message -----
From: "Place, Jeff" <PlaceJ1@si.edu>
To: howiebear1@embarqmail.com ; josephsmd@aol.com ; rita_j_forrester@wellmont.org ; vicki.virts@vdot.virginia.gov ; info@bryantlabel.com ; localfleur@comcast.net ; mclain@mail.etsu.edu
Cc: friends.fold@yahoo.com
Sent: Friday, March 21, 2008 10:39:23 AM
Subject: The Carter Fold Tapes

March 21, 2008

To the Carter Fold Board:

I have been asked to give my opinion on the best course to preserve the collection of tapes made over the years at the Carter Fold. I have run the Smithsonian Folklife Archives for over twenty years and know a fair amount about audio archives. I am told you have a substantial collection both on cassette tape and digital audio tape.

I also understand that one possibility is to send the originals to the Southern Folklife Collection at the University of North Carolina where they will digitize the entire collection. The Southern Folklife Collection is one of the two most important collections nationally of country music (the other being the Country Music Hall of Fame). They have a dedicated staff and good facilities to digitize materials. They have also been important on innovative techniques for recovering damaged tape. When I wrote my part of the book for the reissue of the Anthology of American Folk Music that was the main resource I used more than any other for articles and photographs. They house the John Edwards Memorial Foundation Collection which is the country’s most important research collection on early country music. It’s an international destination for music scholars. It makes perfect sense for a set to be there, there is no other regional repository in your area with that kind of international prominence..

The most important thing is these be copied soon, in some cases it is probably too late. Digital audio tape was a favorite of sound engineers but is not an archival medium. Some DAT tape goes bad within five years and I’m assuming you have some older. Soon you will unable to find a machine, studios are getting rid of them. Believe me I can tell you horror stories of having mistakenly copied older fragile recordings to DAT where the original is broken and the DAT which was supposed to have been the preservation copy is unplayable. Unlike analog tape it is not fixable when it degrades. You can imagine a small tape cartridge when very compact 0s and 1s encoded on the tape and what happens when temperature and humidity expand and contract those tapes. Cassettes are not great but also do not last forever. What is important is for you to get a set of the Carter Fold tapes on a stable digital media and one that can easily migrated to the next generation of media. The long term home for the cassettes and DATs is really irrelevant in the long run. They won’t exist as playable items in a short while. Their importance is as a home for the audio information now until it can be transferred. If UNC has offered to make these copies for the Carter Fold at no cost that is a very expensive and highly valuable gift. Above all else you need to get these tapes copied now and if not UNC then to raise the money or find someone else willing to cover the cost..

Best regards,

Jeff Place
Head Archivist
Ralph Rinzler Archives and Collections
Smithsonian Institution

Jeff Place has been the archivist for the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections at the Center since January 1988. He has overseen the cataloging of the Center's collections. He has a masterʼs in library science from the University of Maryland and specializes in sound archives. He is currently on the Preservation and Technology Committee for the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and the advisory board for the Woody Guthrie Archives. He was formerly a member of the Board of Governors for the Recording Academy ʼs Washington D.C. Chapter. He has been involved in the compilation of 40 CDs for Smithsonian Folkways including Woody Guthrie's Long Ways to Travel: The Unreleased Folkways Masters, for which he won the 1994 Brenda McCallum Prize from the American Folklore Society, the Lead Belly Legacy Series, Lead Belly Sings for Children, and the Asch Recordings of Woody Guthrie. Place has been nominated for four Grammy Awards and eleven Indie Awards, winning two Grammys and five Indies . He was one of the producers and writers of the acclaimed 1997 edition of the Anthology of American Folk Music and the Best of Broadside, 1962-1988 (2000). Place has overseen the recording of a number of regional folk festivals in addition to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival (1988-present). He was on the curatorial team for the traveling Woody Guthrie exhibit, This Land is Your Land. He also co-curated the 2003 Smithsonian Folklife Festival program on Appalachian culture. In addition, he has served as a consultant to the Ralph Stanley Museum in Clintwood , Virginia , The Earl Scruggs Center in Shelby , North Carolina , The Birthplace of Country Music Museum in Bristol , Tennessee and the Woodstock Museum in Bethel , Vermont. He has been a collector of traditional music for over 40 years.