IASA 2019 Annual Conference

The 80,000 lacquer disc audio recordings of RTS (Radio Télévision Suisse) are a unique collection spanning from the 1930s to the 1950s. The disc collection covers contents including radio dramas, classical music, and news reports, among many others. The various types of lacquers used throughout the years make this collection an interesting case study, from a chemist and/or a curator point of view. The digitization of these broadcast archives is an 8-year long service provided by the French GECKO company.

Patricia Herold will mention the FONSART organization and its overall history in safeguarding and promoting archives. She will speak about the various steps in setting up the RTS discs safeguarding project, and she will present a comparison of the Visual Audio optical digitization technique, compared to the standard stylus playback technique. Mrs. Herold will briefly mention the history of the various sub-collections. The partnership with the GECKO company, in terms of logistics, cataloguing, digital file integration, and monitoring the production done by GECKO will be mentioned.

Eric Monge, IT manager at GECKO, will present MADAMS, GECKO's in-house workflow and database management system. Karen Beun, production manager, will focus on the technical workflow, and go into details about the metadata provided and the various disc playback techniques used throughout the project. Finally, Emiliano Flores, restoration manager, will present the digital restoration aspect of the project.

Rebecca Rochat, preventive preservation expert, will present her digital guide with the results of her several-year long research on lacquer discs, which is expected to be an important landmark for all specialists of the topic. A chemist and microscopic approach to the deterioration of lacquer discs will be developed.