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The acoustical era from the late 1800s to about 1926, for example, includes important early recordings of jazz, vaudeville and burlesque that haven't been preserved or made publicly available, Loughney said. Much has already been lost. The Library of Congress partnered with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, to develop new technology over the past decade to create high-resolution digital scans of the earliest wax cylinder recordings. In late 2011, scientists and curators played back some of Alexander Graham Bell's earliest sound recording experiments for the first time, using the new technology. To raise public and private funds, the library has created the nonprofit National Recording Preservation Foundation that will eventually award grants to small- and medium-size archives that need funding for audio preservation work. The foundation is setting up its operation this year and is beginning to raise money. "America's recorded sound history is incredibly rich," Loughney said. "There's just a lot of material that's sitting in archives that is slowly deteriorating, and unless an effective national approach is taken to saving these materials, it's going to be a tremendous loss."
___ Online: Library of Congress: http://www.loc.gov/
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