But after Feaster thought more about the trip, he started to worry.

"These are glass discs with a thin veneer of lacquer coating, which are extremely fragile. They're broken, but the grooves could still be lined up," he said of the delicate items that had been stored at IU's Lilly Library for decades. "Then I started to think: What happens if the TSA wants to examine my 'mysterious' package? I was playing out all these different scenarios, and it just seemed too risky."

So he hopped in his car -- carrying the discs in a custom-designed box created by IU Libraries' E. Lingle Craig Preservation Laboratory on campus -- and drove more than 15 hours one way to Andover, Massachusetts, home of the Northeast Document Conservation Center. Experts there can preserve audio from grooved media using a touchless optical-scan technology, which retrieves sound without damaging the physical object.

"The process was developed experimentally by the Library of Congress and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, among other places, but the NEDCC is the first place to make it work as a commercial service," Feaster said. "These are recordings that, just a few years ago, would've been beyond recovery."

Lacquer discs are a format that must be preserved quickly, so time is of the essence, he said.