British Library to digitize 1000's of donated tapes.

This was originally posted by sunjan on taperssection 12/31/09.

"The collection of UK taper Michael Gerzon, who died in 1996, has been donated to the British Library. Among others, he managed to tape many indie acts early in their carreer (pre- Radiohead, Swervedriver, Supergrass etc). He did DAT pulls as early as 1988, and made very elaborate notes." A picture of Gerzon's technique is available here. Gerzon's paper “Stereo Shuffling: New Approach – Old Technique” is available here thanks to audiosignal.co.uk. Actually, several of his papers are available here.

The entire article is available here thanks to the CEC - Concordia Archival Project.

Here's a small excerpt:
"Michael Gerzon (1945–1996) was variously described in his obituaries as “one of the audio industry’s greatest thinkers and writers”, (2) “one of its most prolific polymaths”, (3) and even — put most simply and without embarrassment by Richard Elen — as a “genius”. (4) The respected author of over 120 published papers, many on aspects of audio theory, sound recording/reproduction and technology, he was also a postgraduate student of axiomatic quantum theory, expert in psychoacoustics and auditory perception, leading contributor to the development of ambisonics and co-inventor of the Soundfield microphone (the first capable of directional three-dimensional recording), along with a raft of designs relating to digital audio, signal processing, systems theory, noise shaping and many others. He died in 1996, aged 50, from complications arising from acute asthma, a condition he battled against for most of his life.

The Michael Gerzon Archive is the work of one of the most prolific and dedicated recordists in the field of live engineering, consisting of thousands of hours of recordings made over a period of thirty years. As a subject for archival, the transfer of so much audio on a traditional, “one-to-one” basis would require a commitment on an equal and ultimately impractical level. Thankfully, current technology now allows archival-quality audio transfer to take place on a scale previously impossible. Migration of the collection from obsolete carriers to secure, digital files was therefore one of the first — and certainly the largest — to be undertaken by the British Library Sound Archive as part of a programme of mass-digitisation, with audio from up to four discrete sound sources ingested and archived simultaneously."