ILKAR at 2009 IASA conference in Athens, Greece

At the 2009 IASA conference in Athens, Elena Gómez Sánchez and Albrecht Wiedmann presented an outline of the ILKAR's research methodology and first preliminary results.

Albrecht Wiedmann (Ethnological Museum in Berlin) introduced the ILKAR project, the project's main objectives and described the research carried out so far for cylinders. Emphasis was put so far on improving the casting process in which positives are made from negatives.

Elena Gómez Sánchez (Rathgen Research Laboratory in Berlin), spoke about ILKAR's research on magnetic tape. She described ILKAR's research methodology which is based on a condition survey of the reel collections at the Ethnological Museum. She also presented first results of the chemical analyses of tapes and tape types. Currently, research focuses on the identification of tape types, the assessment of their condition and the analysis of degradation markers and employs fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, confocal microscopy and the analysis of volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

The audience was especially interested in non-destructive methods to determine the condition of reel tapes. Elena Gómez Sánchez clarified that the analytical techniques on which she is currently working are typically non-destructive and applied as such in other areas of science. In the case of FTIR, however, and given the sensitive nature of the holdings subject of this study, further tests are currently under development in order to make sure this is also the case for magnetic tapes, especially in terms of sound quality.