Thanks for all the helpful comments (even you, "let me google that for you" guy)!
We have a requirement that all board meetings have to be recorded for two reasons -- one, so the minutes can be derived from the recording, and two, open records requests by the public to hear the meeting audio. Recordings have to be kept for a certain period, and I was hoping to automate the boxes and boxes of old tapes we have sitting around (by keeping X previous recordings and dropping the oldest ones automatically when their expiration date comes).
Before "let me google that for you" guy Googled it for me I read an article on doing this with Pulseaudio, but I am more in the market for a commercial solution for capturing and streaming the audio. It has to work every time without technical assistance, and while there are some areas where I am comfortable rolling my own solution, this is not one of them. Now, for the receiving piece running on a server in the datacenter I am open to a more customized solution.
I found a product from Barix called the Exstreamer 500 for about $600 at
Pro Audio Gear. Does anyone have any experience with Barix devices? It appears that it can either stream the audio over a built-in Shoutcast server or record directly to a USB key. If streaming over a private VLAN to a non-internet-connected server is deemed too risky by mgmt, then at the very least the recordings could be uploaded from the USB key (maybe along with the manual transcription and/or minutes) after the meeting.
Thanks again for all your suggestions! I knew someone out there had to have done this before me.