British Library Fights To Preserve Historic Recordings Archive
As part of its vast collection of literary and historic treasures (the Magna Carta, Leonardo da Vinci’s notebook), the British Library owns some six million sound recordings, including significant theater productions, famous voices (like J.R.R. Tolkien’s), and field recordings of extinct animals. Some of them date back to the earliest and most fragile days of recording technology.
Now, as the Telegraphreports, the library is launching an urgent campaign to digitize and preserve its collection.
Michael Sauers is currently the Director of Technology for Do Space in Omaha, NE. Michael has been training librarians in technology for the past twenty years and has also been a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, serials cataloger, technology consultant, and bookseller since earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany’s School of Information Science and Policy. Michael has also written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and his fourteenth book, Emerging Technologies: A Primer for Librarians (w/ Jennifer Koerber) was published in May 2015 and more books are on the way. In his spare time he blogs at travelinlibrarian.info, runs The Collector’s Guide to Dean Koontz Web site, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.
View all posts by Michael Sauers
As part of its vast collection of literary and historic treasures (the Magna Carta, Leonardo da Vinci’s notebook), the British Library owns some six million sound recordings, including significant theater productions, famous voices (like J.R.R. Tolkien’s), and field recordings of extinct animals. Some of them date back to the earliest and most fragile days of recording technology.
