Most record players don't even play 78's. I had to go out and buy some borderline novelty player to play a few Soviet 78's. The whole point of copyright is it's a limited time monopoly that must end at a reasonable time, at which point works fall into the public domain. The problem is sheet music, music recording, likenesses, photography, and written works all have radically different interpretations of this, or have…
The IA is risking all the work they’ve done so far. If they want to archive copyrighted material, they should do it and sit on it until the copyright expires. If the hope is that the archive is around 1000 years from now, then what’s the rush to release these 78’s right now?
If preservation of unprofitable content is the goal, sit down with the lawyers and hammer out conditions under which the IA can be given permission to preserve content. A good negotiator can probably even get record labels to pay for it if they think they're getting a copyright win.
The IA doesn't respect copyright to a fault and it shows and they're going to keep losing as long as they believe they're entitled to ignore it.