what you need is an analog to digital converter to go between the tape player and the computer. I'm not sure where these can be found other than at digitization labs.
You'll then need the software to record the audio. For the PC, Sony's Sound Forge is a pretty good program. You can DL a fully functional trial version. There's also Audacity which is Open Source and is for both Mac and PC, but I find it a little tricky to use.
In terms of formatting, you should probably go with open-source, lossless format. Of course formats change very quickly, but if it's open-source then there is a good chance that it will be able to be migrated or emulated. The best way to make sure of this would be to leave a set of analog (paper) instructions about how it was digitized, what program, and was type of music file it is. That way when they find it they can go back and try to either migrate or emulate it in concurrence with practices at the time.
I could ask my friends who are in the "Intro to Audio Preservation" course for even more information if you are interested.
Can you tell that this is stuff i want to be doing??
More resources:
This is the page/walkthrough that we used in my digitzation class when we did audio digitzation (http://www.jasonmolin.net/projects/audio_digitization/).
These are the readings for the digitization class (http://courses.ischool.utexas.edu/megan/2007/Spring/INF385R/readings.php#audio).
ask a digital librarian...
what you need is an analog to digital converter to go between the tape player and the computer. I'm not sure where these can be found other than at digitization labs.
You'll then need the software to record the audio. For the PC, Sony's Sound Forge is a pretty good program. You can DL a fully functional trial version. There's also Audacity which is Open Source and is for both Mac and PC, but I find it a little tricky to use.
In terms of formatting, you should probably go with open-source, lossless format. Of course formats change very quickly, but if it's open-source then there is a good chance that it will be able to be migrated or emulated. The best way to make sure of this would be to leave a set of analog (paper) instructions about how it was digitized, what program, and was type of music file it is. That way when they find it they can go back and try to either migrate or emulate it in concurrence with practices at the time.
I could ask my friends who are in the "Intro to Audio Preservation" course for even more information if you are interested.
Can you tell that this is stuff i want to be doing??
More resources:
This is the page/walkthrough that we used in my digitzation class when we did audio digitzation (http://www.jasonmolin.net/projects/audio_digitization/).
These are the readings for the digitization class (http://courses.ischool.utexas.edu/megan/2007/Spring/INF385R/readings.php#audio).