WIPR

WIPR is the Puerto Rican public broadcaster used as the recovery case in Why digital archiving is more than "store and ignore". The episode says WIPR had quarter-inch analog reel-to-reel recordings of radio shows from the 1950s through the 1980s, later digitized around 2007 or 2008 with an NEH grant and stored on LTO3 data tapes.

The preservation problem was not simply that the tapes were old. By the time Linda Todich and Digital Bedrock received them, the organization no longer had staff memory or documentation explaining how the tapes had been written. Digital Bedrock recovered the files by reconstructing the Preservation Technical Environment, and the recovered recordings are now part of the American Archive of Public Broadcasting online.

Connections

• Digital Bedrock and Linda Todich - recovery team and expert.
• Digital Preservation - broader archival practice illustrated by the case.
• Preservation Technical Environment - missing documentation, old backup software, and legacy operating-system dependency.
• American Archive of Public Broadcasting - destination for the recovered recordings.
• Analog Media Preservation - original recordings were analog reel-to-reel media.