William,

It would depend on what system the tapes originated.

If they come from an IBM like system (S390, OS400) or even an IBM like
system such as FACOM or Tandem there is a good chance that the tapes are
"Standard label" tapes.

In this case the tapes should have headers before each file that would
indicate information such as creation date and the first 17 bytes of a data
set name. To dump the headers most systems have some sort of tapemap
program.

If the tapes have come from an "open" systems platform such as one of the
UNIXs there is a good chance they are in tar format which has not changed
significantly in decades. If this is the case you can run tar to dump the
filenames (and possibly some other attributes) for the data on the tape.

If the tapes were written on a Windows system, or from a backup system on
UNIX (such as TSM, Networker et al) you will have to see if the system used
has a way of mapping the tape.

If you can identify the platform(s) more specifically I can probably provide
more information.

Once you establish what is on the tape, getting it off the tape might be
another story in itself.

Gerard

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