How to Digitize a Record

One of the Library's missions is to preserve audio-visual materials. Much of this work happens at the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Virginia. Here's a quick look at the process of digitizing a 78 RPM disc, making it more accessible for Library patrons like you! pic.twitter.com/hhzBq6MDH7
— Library of Congress (@librarycongress) June 13, 2023

One of the missions of the Library of Congress of the United States is to digitize information sources to preserve them from loss and make them more broadly available. In this video, a professional conservationist takes a 78 RPM record from 1908 and prepares it for recording. He cleans the record, mounts it precisely on a turntable, and chooses the right stylus for this recording.

The song is "Don't Take Me Home" by Eddie Morton. It's a novelty song about a man who prefers incarceration to living with his shrewish wife.

Huh... the method is genuinely surprising to me. I figured there would be a machine that basically replaces the needle/stylus with a laser that could read LP's in a similar method to modern discs and do an immediate, on-the-fly analogue to digital conversion. This way seems way more inefficient. I suppose the digital version would mimic the turntable sound, including what I assume would be "audial impurities" caused by it or an imperfect LP itself.
If the laser digitizer machine thingy that I described above doesn't exist, somebody should definitely invent it. I nominate Colin B.

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This bring back memories. I actually worked at an oldies radio station in the mid-80s that played 78s. That meant music from the early 20th century. Songs were only about two minutes long, sometimes less, and I was the only woman on the air staff, so getting to the far away ladies room during a song was a challenge. I eventually gave up and dared into the men's room.
Years later, I found myself at another station that actually had a wax/vinyl disc cutter in the equipment storage room. It was from the days when that was the only way to record ads, direct to wax. I'm sure anything recorded there was quite wavy and distorted.