Preserving American History, One Reel at a Time by Jeff Anony

In 1951, legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow launched a ground-breaking radio program called This I Believe, featuring American icons Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Robinson and everyday citizens reading self-penned short essays on their individual values and motivations. The series, which ran in the U.S. until 1955, was an international phenomenon, broadcast on nearly 200 stations across America and in 97 countries all over the world.

When the series ended, this collection of 800 oral essays was captured on 200 reel-to-reel audio tapes the only known copies of this landmark series. They provided an audio time capsule of American society in the 1950s as seen by ordinary and extraordinary citizens alike. The tapes became the property of the Tufts University Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, a Boston school that is home to the Edward R. Murrow Center of Public Diplomacy.

Two years ago, the Fletcher School asked us for help in preserving the original This I Believe tapes for future generations, cleaning and digitizing the master recordings. Our Entertainment Services team quickly discovered that the years have not been kind to those tapes, as Father Time and Mother Nature had put the 50+ year old tapes in a state of decay. As the only known recordings of the program, the stakes were high many of the tapes are so badly damaged that we literally had only one chance to clean and digitize them before they deteriorates beyond repair.

In order to effectively digitize the Murrow recordings, our team began by cleaning and repairing the tape splices between each program, removing the worn-down residue from the old splices and applying new, clean adhesive between each cut. Then we began the digital cleaning, remastering and digitization of the content on the tapes using software tools that enabled improved audio sample rates, higher bit depth and removal of latent sound artifacts such as clicks, pops and hisses, producing a warmer, more authentic sound. Out of the 200 tapes, only three were unsalvageable. If the project began even just six months later, as many as twenty percent additional recordings would have been beyond repair.

View an album of photos from the restoration process on our Facebook page.

Now the entire digitized This I Believe series is available online to the public in the Edward R. Murrow Collection in the Tufts Digital Archive. If you'd like to share your own This I Believe statement, go to http://thisibelieve.org/.

Iron Mountain has a long track record of successfully restoring and preserving pieces of history, working with a number of organizations including the John F. Kennedy Library and the Grammy Museum as well as the majority of the nation's recording labels, movie studios and cable networks. Projects like these help organizations make the transition to digital records, enabling them to extend their legacy and further their mission.

Culturally significant content like the Murrow collection are part of our great nation's history and should be digitally available for future generations to learn from and treasure. This Iron Mountain believes

What do you believe? We'd love to hear from you.

LINK:	http://blog.ironmountain.com/2013/industry/entertainment-services/pres...
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