Heraclitus’ statement “The only thing that is constant is change” is an excellent description of the world today. The world has changed so much in just the last fifty or so years. Remember the days when our music was played on vinyl records, then came the 8-track tapes. Cassette tapes were the big hit because not only could you play your music, you could also record your own stuff on them. Today everything has gone digital so what do we do with all our previous collections? Many of us have recorded family events and interviews with family members on cassette tapes. Are those memories going to be lost when there are no cassette players to play them on, or when the cassette tapes eventually break? Luckily, we have Audacity to help us out.
Audacity is free software used for audio editing downloaded from www.audacityteam.org/download/. You will find the manual on how to use Audacity at https://ometra.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/audacity-manual.pdf. You will need a cassette player, audio cable, and your computer then you will be all set to convert those cassettes into mp3’s. There are many YouTube videos on how to use Audacity, and I would highly recommend viewing several. These YouTubes will give you an excellent visual and understanding of how it works. A Google search of “convert cassette tapes to mp3 with Audacity YouTube” should bring you up pages of beginner videos to get you started.
When you turn your cassette tapes into an mp3, you can then upload your information onto FamilySearch. By converting those old cassette tapes, you will preserve your audio treasures for all to hear and enjoy. My husband has a cassette recording of his Grandmother speaking in church right before he left on his LDS mission. She passed away a few months later. Wouldn’t it be nice if this recording could be saved onto FamilySearch for her posterity to enjoy? Others have recordings of Grandparents telling stories about their lives. Imagine how nice that would be to listen to their stories in their own voice and have it saved for all to enjoy.
If you are lucky enough to have valuable recordings on cassette tapes, it is crucial for you to save them to a format that can be used by FamilySearch and archived for posterity’s sake. The challenge of this technology-rich world is to keep our information up-to-date and keep valuable information available for future generations.
0 comments:
Post a Comment