Developing the Missing Tools and Workflows for Preserving Digital Audio Tape (DAT)

FAIN: PR-295889-24

Northeast Document Conservation Center, Inc. (Andover, MA 01810-1438)
Bryce Roe (Project Director: May 2023 to present)

A Tier II project to develop open-source software and workflows to reformat audio recordings on DAT tapes according to preservation standards.

This project seeks to address the lack of accessible tools and preservation workflows for accurately transferring audio and metadata from DAT tapes. DAT tapes are at a much higher risk than many older audio formats, and are very likely to contain unique content. The goal of this project is to make the transfer of audio data from DAT tape as straightforward and verifiable as it would be to transfer a Broadcast WAVE file from a modern audio recorder. We plan to meet these objectives by updating long-abandoned open-source DAT transfer applications to work with modern computers, developing multiple strategies for transferring data with DAT players and DDS drives (a technology that facilitates direct data transfer), building more robust metadata standards that account for the unique properties of DATs, and facilitating an outreach program to give managers of DAT collections accessible, easy-to-follow guidance to save unique audio hidden on this obsolete format.