Jim Crank wrote in 030430 MMDigest, "MIDI Files for Archiving Music
Roll Data":

> Paper rolls are falling apart and one has to do something to save
> the music they contain.  Many that I know of, organ player rolls,
> are badly damaged where the tracker bar ears rubbed against the
> edges, they are not playable without severe risk.

None of this is as true in Europe, where better paper was used for
rolls and a little-played 88-note or Duo-Art roll comes out of the
box as springy and fresh as a new one.

The rolls in my collection that are crisping up are the 65-note ones
imported from the USA before local roll plants started up in 1905-1908
-- and they're certainly nothing like as fragile as similar rolls I've
handled in America which have never left there.

I know a paper specialist who helped save the libraries in Florence
after they had been flooded, and I feel that explaining why this paper
has lasted better than the American paper is a matter for such a
specialist.

Briefly in the States last week, I was honoured to join an AMICA meet
in South Windsor, CT, and the question of digital media came up.  The
consensus was that CDs won't last even as long as the worst kind of
rolls, even if players for them survive.

It was thought that the plastics museum in Leominster, MA, could be
of great service in the future, not only in this regard but in the
preservation of recent MM instruments containing plastics parts.
Seems we're all sobering up a bit.  Modern as well as old has problems.

Dan Wilson, London