[JoJo Gunn]

I'm no audio pro, but will say this - since you're archiving don't even think of MP3's. They're the .jpg's of the audio world, and they throw information away in order to reduce file size, information you'll never recover, and already you're going to be dealing with hiss and possible azimuth problems (head and tape alignment) from old stretched tapes, etc.

Go with .wav files all the way, 44,100 khz at 16 bits, which is the CD standard. MP3's will be converted to that anyway when burning your CD(s).

[JoJo Gunn]

Addenda: the CD standard is 74 minutes, at 650 mb's a disc, which averages out to about 8.78 meg's of file size for each minute. I'd personally make some safeties after getting them on the hard drive and before any sort of editing, so go out and grab some extra CD-R's or RW's.