Arguably of more importance than the loss of unique (1 specimen only) 78 records are the loss of unique newspapers and political leaflets, which are legion. The latter naturally had a lower "survival rate" than mass produced-and-comparatively durable phonograph records. This is not to say that saving ultra-rare 78s are unimportant, but there is a whole mass of written culture out there that is one breath away from extinction.

Fanzines are another example of small circulation and thus endangered media.

The rise of the Adobe pdf format over the past decade and the crashing price of computer storage space has been a boon to preservation of rare written and photographic material. It's very satisfying to save something in this way for future generations and I urge those archive rats on the list to do their best to preserve and share when they come across unique material in their research pursuits.

Tim Davenport /// Carrite Corvallis, OR USA

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Message: 8 Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2014 15:53:10 +0100 From: David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Rarest records

On 4 August 2014 15:11, Andy Mabbett andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:

but the thesis that some 78rpm records constitute the only surviving example of a particular recording, with no master in an archive somewhere, sent chills up my spine.

This is surprisingly common with indie records. Frequently, a few hundred pieces of vinyl are the *only* copies of the music in question.

- d.