An 18-month digitization project undertaken by Wartburg College Archives and the Archives of Iowa Broadcasting has resulted in the digitization of 336 radio transcription discs from the AIB WHO Radio collection.

Wartburg was one of only 16 institutions to receive a Recordings at Risk grant through the Council on Library and Information Resources in May 2018. The grant allowed for the reformatting of the broadcasts which originally aired between 1938 and 1961. The recordings are available at https://whoradioiowa.omeka.net/.

“The materials selected for this project included locally produced programs related to Iowa farming, children’s entertainment, sporting events, political speeches, special events like the Iowa State Fair and Iowa Centennial celebration and interviews with World War II soldiers by local reporters Herb Plambeck and Jack Shelley,” said Amy Moorman, the college’s archivist. “The WHO transcription discs represent some of the oldest and most fragile recordings in the holdings of the Archives of Iowa Broadcasting. We are thrilled to have been able to preserve these materials with the help of the CLIR Recordings at Risk grant program.”

Recordings at Risk is a national regranting program administered by CLIR to support the preservation of rare and unique audio and audiovisual content of high scholarly value through digital reformatting. Awards from the open competitions range from $10,000 to $50,000 and cover costs of preservation reformatting for audio and/or audiovisual content by qualified external service providers. This is the program’s third grant cycle.