Deborah Zabarenko of Reuters News recently reported on the recovery of Alexander Graham Bell’s voice from “a wax-covered cardboard disc on April 15, 1885.”  (More details are available at http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/29/usa-bell-voice-idUSL2N0DG12P20130429.)  As astounding as the Alexander Graham Bell preservation effort is, I was even more impressed by other recovery work, especially “that scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California [the same group that recovered Bell’s voice] had retrieved 10 seconds of the French folk song Au Clair de la Lune from an 1860 recording of sound waves made as squiggles on soot-covered paper. That was almost 30 years before Thomas Edison’s oldest known playable recording, made in 1888.”  First, I am stunned that “squiggles on soot-covered paper” can produce sound.  Secondly, I am floored that someone has preserved that dirty paper for over 150 years.  And, finally, of course, I am absolutely flabbergasted that the sound was recovered, as noted above.

The Rare Books and Manuscripts Library contends with immediate conservation and long term preservation issues every day.  Barring incidental floods, fire, vermin or mold, books are relatively easy to preserve if housed in a stable and secure environment and monitored constantly from now until eternity.  Of an equal preservation challenge are non-print media – audio, video, computer, etc. – when time has yet to determine the life of these fragile media.  In addition to the materials themselves, there is the challenge of guaranteeing that old formats can be reformatted for new equipment without compromising sound or image.  We are all familiar with the development of audio formats from vinyl records to cassette tapes to CD’s to I-pods.  And, the change will continue: what will people be listening to in 2163?  Rare Books, then, and other special collection libraries around the world, preserve multiple formats of materials with the hope that even if we cannot reformat all our current holdings on a timely basis, technology will prevail.  Certainly, the conversion of “squiggles on soot-covered paper” to an audible version of Au Claire de la Lune is a hopeful sign.  The key, remains, however, to preserving the originals.  The 15th-century print versions of the Bible and the classics would not have been possible had manuscript versions not survived.  Listening to Hard Knock Life 150 years from now will not be possible without conserving some version of it today.