Audio Preservation Digitally

In today's New York Times, the article "Playing Old Records (No Needles Required)" (registration required) talks about a science lab in CA that is developing ways to convert old sound recordings without playing them.

Early sound recordings (78-rpm shellac discs, wax cylindars, etc) generally require contact (e.g. with the needle) to be played; contact that causes damage to the recording. This science team, receiving money from the Library of Congress, is developing scanning techniques to digitize the playing surface of the discs. With a scanned image, the audio can be recreated by software virtually playing the disc--cleaning up the sound by taking into account scratches, dirt, and even broken discs.

As the article states, this work has the potential to impact libraries trying to archive recorded sound. How exciting to have the possibility of retrieving recordings of sounds that were thought to have been lost on a cracked or broken disc.