Archival Sound Recordings is the result of a development project to increase access to the British Library Sound Archive's extensive collections. The British Library holds one of the world’s foremost sound archives with a collection of over 3.5 million audio recordings. These come from all over the world and cover the entire range of recorded sound from music, drama and literature, to oral history, wildlife and environmental sounds. You can search and browse information about all the sounds held in the British Library at our online catalogue.
This website delivers a selection of that rich audio heritage in the form of tens of thousands of digitised recordings and their associated documentation. If you were to listen to all the recordings on this site for eight hours each day, every day, it would take you around four years to hear them all!
The digitisation project which made this website possible ran from 2004 to 2009 and was funded by the JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) under its Digitisation Programme.
Who can access recordings?
Higher and further education
Staff and students at licensed UK higher and further education institutions can listen to all recordings online and download the majority of them for academic use. Institution librarians can request a free licence from asr@bl.uk.
General public
In the British Library
Anyone with a Readers Pass can listen to the recordings on the computers in British Library reading rooms.
On the web
Where copyright permits, many recordings are also available to the general public to listen to online.
Using the website
Audio
The recordings on this website were selected in consultation with Sound Archive expert curators and an external academic user panel. Selection was based on the following criteria:
- Complexity of digitisation
- Availability of documentation
- User need
- Complexity of Intellectual Property Rights
The initial digitisation was in .wav format – an archival standard lossless file which retains all the original information. To make access possible from this website, files were converted to compressed formats: .wma for streaming (listening directly from the website) and .mp3 for downloads. Mac users may need to download software such as Winamp or Windows Media Player to replay the .wma format.
View a list of free audio software
Metadata
Every recording on this website is accompanied by metadata – the descriptive, technical and administrative information about the item. The basic descriptive metadata presented with recordings typically includes:
- the name of the recording
- the date it was recorded
- where it was recorded
- who recorded it
- who is performing or speaking
- a brief description of the contents
Further information on how the digitised files were processed is available by clicking on the link "View full metadata for this item". To return to an item page from the metadata page please use your browser's back button.
Some of the information comes from the British Library Sound Archive catalogue, some is gleaned from materials found with the original physical carrier (such as a record sleeve or a tape label) and some may come from accompanying notes provided by the person who recorded it. Logged in users from licensed higher and further education institutions can supplement this data by adding tags and contextual information about the recordings for other researchers to use.
The metadata is encoded in METS (XML) and compliant with Dublin Core standards.
Read more about metadata standards used on this website
Intellectual property rights
The clearance of third-party rights has been essential to the success of this website. Innovative licensing arrangements to permit use of material in an educational and research environment have been sought with commercial publishers as well as with individual rights owners and their representatives. Where possible, rights for full public access were obtained.
A considerable number of rights owners still need to be located and contacted to ensure that all the recordings selected for inclusion can be added to the website. As the rights reside with these third parties, it may not be possible to add all of the content originally selected for the website.
The site is governed by an ethical use policy and a notice and take down procedure is provided in the event that an unidentified rights owner comes forward. If you consider yourself a rights owner or know of the whereabouts of a rights owner please contact asr@bl.uk.
Involving users
There are a number of ways users logged-in at licensed UK institutions can interact with this site:
- mark useful recordings as favourites
- add searchable tags to help other users find the recordings they need
- add contextual notes, providing extra detail about recordings
- follow and comment on the blog
- submit a case study on how you are using the resource. This may be used on the website or on leaflets, helping to showcase how audio can be used in teaching learning and research.
Read more about the Archival Sound Recordings project