Archival Sound Recordings is a British Library service which provides free online access to spoken word, music and environmental sounds from the British Library Sound Archive. The resource was created with funding from the JISC.

Background information edit

The Archival Sound Recordings project to digitise recordings from the British Library Sound Archive and make them available online began in 2004 and concluded in March 2009. In this period the project digitised over 32,000 recordings, created detailed metadata to describe the origin and content of each item, cleared the rights for academic and (where possible) public use and put them up online. The British Library Sound Archive will continue to add further material to the website as it becomes available.

Accessing the recordings edit

Members of the public edit

Anyone with a Reader Pass can listen to any recording on the website from British Library reading rooms. In addition, where copyright permits, several thousand recordings can be played online from outside the Library.

UK Higher and Further Education edit

All recordings are available for streaming and download to members of licensed UK higher and further education institutions. Staff and students can access recordings by logging in with their Shibboleth or Open Athens password. Institution librarians can request a free license from the British Library

Audio collections currently available edit

Classical Music edit

Pre-1957 recordings of works by:

World and Traditional music edit

Field recordings and commercial releases from around the world:

  • David Rycroft Southern Africa recordings
  • Klaus Wachsmann Uganda recordings
  • Peter Cook Uganda Recordings
  • Decca West African recordings
  • Music from India
  • Ethnographic wax cylinders

Accents and Dialects edit

Examples of regional speech from around the UK:

  • Millenium Memory Bank
  • Survey of English Dialects

Arts, Literature and Performance edit

Radio programmes, literary readings and public debates:

  • African Writers' Club
  • Early spoken word recordings
  • St Mary-le-Bow public debates

Oral History edit

In-depth life history interviews:

  • Art, photography and architecture
  • Oral history of jazz in Britain
  • Eminent scientists
  • History of the Common Cold Unit
  • Jewish survivors of Holocaust
  • Oral history of recorded sound

Environment edit

Wildlife vocalisations and sounds of the industrial and natural worlds:

Links edit


External links edit

Category:British Library Category:Sound archives Category:Jazz record labels Category:Digital libraries Category:Music archives Category:Oral history Category:Sound recording Category:Sound recording technology