I fully support the individuals who are doing archival roll scanning.
I own an Ampico, Duo-Art and a conventional 88-note instrument.  As
with any collector, I have a pile of rolls that are probably on their
last play due to deteriorating paper issues.  I read with interest
especially the post on the Mills Violano scans.  The people who are
anti-scanning are forgetting a few very important things about any
of these paper roll companies.

Most of the original Ampico, Duo-Art, Welte, and original 88-note
masters are long gone.  Think about the number of good instruments
out there that are very difficult to sell because of the availability
of music issues: Art Echo, Art Apollo, Angelus, Welte, as well as
most of the commercial formats.  We need to save everything that we
can for the future.

Even QRS does not have all of its original masters.  It is my
understanding that they are going to significantly reduce the choices
in their current catalog.  As times and tastes changed, old masters
were remade and many times the older arrangements, which people may
now prefer, are long gone.

I would love to own a Mills someday but I definitely would want to be
able to obtain a decent supply of music for it.  One of the wonderful
things about an 88-note player is the huge library of music that is
still available.  Many wonderful arrangements of songs were cut by
companies other than QRS.  We all have a few specific songs that we
wish we could replace in an arrangement other than QRS.  Scanning
preserves for the future.

To buy a roll up so that it cannot be scanned is purely selfish and
it is destructive to the hobby as well as the potential preservation
of the instruments which still exist.  We cannot go to Welte, Link,
Hupfeld, Mills, and many of these companies for replacements.
These companies are long out of business and in most cases all of
the masters, roll making equipment, original catalogs, etc., are
all destroyed.  We need to work as a group to save what we have.
When people hoard rolls for this purpose only, they forget that their
copy may be the last one and if for some reason the roll destructs
when it is played, the entire work of the company and the arrangers
is gone for good.  If everyone had that attitude, we would not see
some of the wonderful film restorations that have been done on films
that were previously thought lost.

Digital preservation is taking place with the recording collection
at the Edison National Historic Site, and as for the movie and video
industry, Turner, UCLA, and many other companies are doing digital
copying and restoration of many classic movies, cartoons, and movie
shorts.  Some of the work that has been done on surviving Vitaphone
shorts is absolutely fantastic.  In recording, some of the most
wanted and highly significant masters were made by small companies
who destroyed their masters after the company felt that demand for
the recording had been met.  If it were not for hobbyist's loaning
existing records and digital restorations, most of us would never be
able to hear historically important music styles, interpretations and
personalities.  Why should digital archival of mechanical music
rolls be any different?

Personally, I probably own 2000 piano rolls of one kind or another.
If someone wanted to copy any of mine, they would be more than welcome.
In fact, it is kind of an honor to know that someone would want to copy
mine to preserve them or make them available to other collectors.

Randy Hammond