School of Music RePlayed: A case study in audio archiving

This project began in 2014 when, on arrival at the ANU School of Music, music technology convenor Assoc. Prof. Samantha Bennett was shown the School's archive of tape recordings. At that stage, the tape archive was housed in the School's basement and appeared not to have been moved nor attended to, in some considerable time. Featuring predominantly classical music recordings, the Schools performance archive is home to more than twelve hundred concert and recital recordings - most on seven-inch reel-to-reel analogue tape - and dates back to 1968. On recognising the need for preservation, Bennett contacted the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) and, shortly afterwards, began a digitisation project to preserve the School's archive.