Magnetic tape isn't just dead, but it is also deteriorating. 

It is breaking down, falling apart, and what was once thought to be nearly permanent is proving to be extraordinarily fragile. 

Audio tape was used for decades as a way to disseminate music, seminars, audio histories, speeches, news, by folklorist, in short--our culture.  Hydrolysis, the breakdown of the glue that holds the little magnetic bits to the tape, is becoming more prevalent.  The life span of tapes, under the best circumstances, is up to 15 years before things start getting sticky.  In other words anything created before 1994 has almost certainly started to lose its fidelity.

Individuals and organizations that are the caretakers of the cultural tid-bits (you might not even know what you have in your hands) ought to seriously consider transferring these materials to a more durable format.  It needn't be expensive

Two years ago I was working on a Folklore project called "Ties That Bind" that involved digitizing some ancient audio tapes.  It was my first Drupal project, that I created from soup to nuts outside of experiments at work.  It proved to be a very simple project (book and pages plus a couple of contributed modules)--but it successfully moved a series of folklore lessons from an increasingly limited number binders and deteriorating cassette tapes online before they became rarified to the point of being useless.  It also made clear to me how simple it can be to preserve these materials.

You can buy a product like the Ion Tape2PC USB Cassette Deck.  They are reasonably priced--typically less than $150.00--and connect directly to your PC and rip the tapes.

Ion also has an offering for those with LPs who want to convert vinyl into a digital format. 

However, you can achieve very nearly the same effect using your own tape deck, an RCA to miniplug cable or a 1/4" to miniplug adapter and a male to male miniplug cable. 

My tape deck had died, so I ran over to the local thrift store with the best headphones I owned and an audio tape.  I plugged each of the decks in that they had and listened.  For about $5 I picked up a Sony TC-FX25 cassette deck that was in good condition.

There is an opensource audio editor called Audacity that purports itself as:

Audacity is a free, easy-to-use audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. You can use Audacity to:

• Record live audio.
• Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
• Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files.
• Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together.
• Change the speed or pitch of a recording.

Audacity does a whole lot more than that though and is ideal for capturing audio from your cassette deck.  My setup is simple:

• 1/4" headphone jack to miniplug adaptor (I bought it at RadioShack)
• Male to Male miniplug cable (RadioShack)
• The Sony Tape Deck

• G5 iMac

The tape deck is hooked into the microphone port on the back of the iMac.  The iMac has Audacity loaded onto it.

You will need to make sure that, at least in MacOS X, that under preferences, the sound input is set to Line In.

Download Audacity and mount the dmg file.  Drag the application to your applications folder.  Fire up the software and you'll be offered an empty project.  Start your tape deck running and click on the red dot.  Adjust your microphone level in the application so your peaks stay within 1.0 and -1.0.  Discard that project and start a new one.  Again, start your tape up, hit the red button, and sit back until your first track is recorded.  You can then export your file in a variety of different formats including MP3.

It is really that easy and almost any organization or individual either already has the resources or can get the resources to do this for almost no money.

Archiving old tapes may be time-consuming, but it is well worth it.