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Hear here: Exploring the British Library Sound Archive

1 July 2015

It's one of the biggest record collections in the world - and it’s all ours. The publically available British Library Sound Archive in London contains everything from chart-topping CDs to 19th-century wax cylinder recordings, and a vast digitisation project is under way to preserve the rarest recordings forever. We sent music journalist and obsessive record collector Mark Ellen to find out more.

Exploring the British Library Sound Archive

Music journalist Mark Ellen visits one of the world’s biggest record collections.

“Sound recording is really a modest form of time travel,” says Will Prentice, Head of Technical Services, Audio and Vision at the British Library – and he should know, having spent hundreds of hours digitising the nation’s most treasured sounds.

At a whopping 7 million recordings, spanning 150 years, the British Library owns one of the largest collections of recorded audio in the world.

There are more sound recording devices in Britain than there are people

But the library finds itself at a critical point in its 110-year history. With the rapid advancement of playback technology, the machines that can play tapes, discs and cylinders are hurtling towards obsolescence.

That, coupled with the ever-expanding nature of the collection, has led to the library launching a campaign – Save Our Sounds – to help raise a much-needed injection of funds.

Will believes the future of any sound archive will be about what to exclude. He says: “There are more sound recording devices in Britain than there are people. Mostly we carry them around in our pocket without thinking about it.”

¼” reel-to-reel tapes being moved within the British Library basements
¼” reel-to-reel tapes recorded in the 1980s
Professional reel-to-reel player being maintained
Damaged gelatine disc being examined

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