New York Public Library races to preserve fragile sound and film
Staff at the library are transferring recordings from deteriorating media as the machines and specialists needed to play them become harder to find.
New York Public Library staff are working beneath Lincoln Center to preserve more than a century of sound and moving images held on deteriorating film, tape, discs and cylinders, UN News reported on 18 October 2026. The work is becoming more urgent as playback machines and the people who can repair them grow harder to find.
Media preservation engineer Rhony Dostaly described the purpose of the transfers as retrieving recordings from the past and making them available today. UN News reported that most material the lab digitizes will be accessible to anyone with a library card.
Why the recordings need careful handling
Media preservation coordinator Casey McNamara examines film frame by frame with a magnifying glass, checking for tears, splices and shrinkage. Acetate film can develop ‘vinegar syndrome’, a chemical decay that leaves it brittle and warped. Cold storage can slow that process, McNamara said, but cannot reverse it.
Damaged audiotape may arrive crinkled or stuck together. Media preservation engineer Victoria Fajardo repairs it by hand before attempting a transfer, a task she likened to surgery. Even Digital Betacam cassettes, once considered robust, have begun shedding material; Francis Dougherty, who built the video lab, now cleans his deck between tapes.
The shrinking supply of playback equipment
Lab manager Shahed Dowlatshahi said the tapes and decks are no longer manufactured. He also warned that only a few people can maintain and repair the equipment. Dougherty said the machines themselves are growing rarer, adding another constraint to transferring recordings before their physical media degrades further.
The library is also using specialist equipment built by California engineer Nick Bergh. A turntable at the lab has a microscope for inspecting disc grooves for scratches; a planned arm that would read discs optically without touching them is unfinished. Bergh’s earlier machine uses lasers to align warped wax cylinders and read broken ones without contact.
NYPL used that earlier machine to transfer the Mapleson Cylinders again. Recorded at the Metropolitan Opera in the early 1900s, they preserve performances by singers who were not otherwise recorded, according to UN News. The example shows what could be lost when an old recording survives but conventional playback becomes difficult.
The work comes ahead of World Day for Audiovisual Heritage on 27 October. UNESCO marks the day annually to draw attention to the preservation of sound and moving-image records; the library’s transfers show the hands-on repair and specialist playback that such preservation can require.
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Sources and context
- Inside the New York ‘time machine’ racing to save a century of sound and filmUN News
- World Day for Audiovisual HeritageUNESCO
AI-assisted article checked against the listed sources. NewsJaws did not conduct interviews or attend the reported events.