A major £1 million pound programme to digitise 12,000 items of sound
recordings from the British Library’s Sound Archive, which amounts to
nearly 4,000 hours of recordings, has been announced today by the Joint Information
Systems Committee (JISC).
This significant resource will be made freely available to further and higher
education and will include a wide range of materials, including classical
and popular music, broadcast radio, oral history, and field and location recordings
of traditional music.
Examples currently held on the British
Library site include a live recording of Paul Robeson in Othello, Florence
Nightingale speaking (one of the earliest sound recordings), and Arthur Conan
Doyle talking about the genesis of Sherlock Holmes. These historic recordings
will be amongst an enormous wealth of materials available to the project to
make available to further and higher education.
The Archival Sound Recordings is a £1m project, made possible through
funding from the Higher Education
Funding Council (HEFCE). The overall digitisation programme, being managed
by the JISC, represents a total investment
of £10m to be applied to delivering high quality content online, including
sound, moving pictures, census data and still images for long-term use by the
further and higher education communities in the UK.
Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive of the British Library welcomed the agreement,
saying: “Sound recordings represent a massively untapped resource in the
field of education. They are relevant to all subjects and we are delighted that
this programme will bring wide access to rare, historic and hugely valuable
sound resources. This partnership demonstrates the British Library’s commitment
to the sector and we are delighted to work with JISC to deliver it.”
Stuart Dempster, JISC Programme Manager said: “This landmark project
promises to deliver a wide range of targeted audio content from one of the world’s
leading sound archives to the UK education community, some of which will be
selected by the education community through an online consultation. It recognises
the potential transformative power of audio for use in learning, teaching and
research.”
1. The British Library – is the national library of the United Kingdom.
It provides world class information services to the academic, business, research
and scientific communities and offers unparalleled access to the world’s
largest and most comprehensive research collection.
2. The British Library Sound Archive - is one of the largest in the world.
It holds over a million discs, 200,000 tapes, and many other sound and video
recordings. The collections come from all over the world and cover the entire
range of recorded sound from music, drama and literature, to oral history and
wildlife sounds. They range from cylinders made in the late 19th century to
the latest CD, DVD and minidisc recordings. The archive holds copies of commercial
recordings issued in the United Kingdom, together with selected commercial recordings
from overseas, radio broadcasts and many privately-made recordings. It also
offers public access to a wide range of specialist publications, books, magazines
and journals covering every aspect of recorded sound. For more information visit
the website
2. .JISC – Joint Information Systems
Committee – is a joint committee of the UK further and higher education
funding bodies, and is responsible for supporting the innovative use of information
and communication technology (ICT) to support learning, teaching, and research.
It is best known for providing the JANET network, a range of support, content
and advisory services, and a portfolio of high-quality resources. Information
about the JISC, its services and programmes can be found at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/.
For further information, contact Philip Pothen on +44 (0)20 7848 2935 or 07887
564 006; email p.pothen@jisc.ac.uk.
