IU grant to help preserve rare Orson Welles radio recordings

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) - Indiana University has won a $25,000 grant to help with its push to preserve recordings of famed director Orson Welles' radio broadcasts, including some long believed to have been lost.

The National Recording Preservation Foundation's grant gives a boost to IU's project set to start this summer to transfer Welles' broadcasts recorded on more than 300 lacquer discs to digital formats.

The most fragile of those discs will be digitally transferred first.

IU's collection includes discs containing rare, original recordings of "The Orson Welles Show," a live radio series produced by its namesake host that debuted in September 1941.

Recordings of only eight of that show's 19 broadcasts were believed to have survived.

But IU's Lilly Library holds 14 broadcasts of the radio show, all recorded on separate lacquer discs.