Cold Spring Harbor Audio Visual Collection

Processing the Cold Spring Harbor Audio Visual Collection was a unique experience due to the volume and scope of the Collection. The Collection overall consists of 4,950 pieces of media, in 11 different formats and takes up about 130 linear feet of shelf space, depending how you count it. It was grouped by format but hadn’t been looked at in years, which meant that old inventory lists, if they existed, were no longer accurate.  I had to start over cataloguing the media which took about 165 hours.  Keeping the Collection grouped by media made sense on one level (as opposed to grouping by subject matter) because much of the media was not readable and the processing often became a game of “Name that obsolete Format”.  Below is a photograph of the Analog Video Formats.  

I learned that at the time of recording the formats were considered state of the art.  Now we, as an Archive, are unable to read or view what is on the tapes. eBay is full of players and recording devices and there are blogs which lament the demise of the Hi-8 tape.  But the lessons ring through loud and clear.  We as Archivists prepare Disaster Plans to prevent and manage threats to our collection.  Typical threats are leaky pipes, electrical shorts and poor storage climates.  

But isn’t the real threat to our collection the possibility of losing our information?  Behold the Type C Helical Film Reel and let us go forth and regularly assess our formats for compatibility and retrieval.

- Amy Driscoll, Project Archivist

Roberto Malinow Laboratory Collection

The following is another post in our series highlighting the collections that are being processed through the NHPRC Basic Processing Grant.


Dr. Roberto Malinow is a neuroscientist whose research at CSHL focused on synapse transmission. His goal was to increase understanding of the changes that take place in synapses during the development of the neuronal networks and during learning and memory processing.

The collection is composed primarily of material generated by the Roberto Malinow Laboratory Group (Dr. Roberto Malinow and his laboratory staff) during their tenure at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory from 1994 until 2006. A small portion of laboratory notebooks are from Dr. Malinow’s, and his colleague Dezhi Liao’s, previous work at the University of Iowa.


The collection was challenging in terms of data preservation. There are over 700 CD-Roms which contained obsolete file formats that are now unreadable. Additionally, there were 62 Magnetic Data Tapes from 1991-1992 which were also unreadable. They were recorded when Dr. Malinow was at the University of Iowa.


The bulk of the collection consisted of more traditional paper formats (laboratory notebooks, files and computer print outs). However, one of the notebooks also contained glass laboratory slides. The slides were housed in cardboard slide folders, but luckily they opened quite easily.


The Malinow Collection provides a good example of the variety of record formats that an archivist might encounter while processing scientific papers, and the challenges they pose. It also illustrates the need to migrate digital data to more current and sustainable formats, or else we risk losing the information forever.

- Amy Driscoll, Project Archivist