Lordy, there are tapes — of the Minnesota Legislature
A legislative division wants to make it easier to listen back to decades-old deliberations of the Minnesota Legislature.
The Legislative Reference Library is aiming to convert reel-to-reel and audio cassette tapes from old proceedings into a digital format.
The project covers activity from 1991 until 2003. From then on, proceedings have been digitally recorded and archived. That makes them available online.
There are more than 28,000 recordings of committee hearings and floor debates that the library wants to digitize. The old tapes are currently located at the library's space in a building adjacent to the Capitol or at the Minnesota Historical Society down the road.
"Digitization of these auditotapes will make the primary records of the Legislature accessible to anyone at any time and preserves these recordings into the future," officials with the library said in a bid solicitation on Monday.
The library was putting out a call for vendors to bid on the project by mid-July. The goal is to complete the conversion by this time next year.
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