In “The British Library is Racing to Save Archived Sounds From Decay,” Bonnie Christian reports on the British Library’s sound collection. The collection is one of the largest sound collections in the world, containing everything from recorded sounds of WWI, intercepted Nazi radio transmissions, soundscapes of city streets back to the 1920s, and recordings of various animal noises. Like most A/V collections, all these sounds are stored on a wide variety of different formats which share one thing in common—they decay very quickly. The library is trying to preserve these sounds by digitizing them, but the enormity of the collection makes it a very difficult, time-consuming, and costly task.
Like the VHS collection however, I have to wonder: are historians using these sounds? I think we should. My material culture side argues they are primary sources like any other, with their own specific set of biases and difficulties, but nothing beyond our capacity to analyze. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to use a sound in a paper format—either you’d have to describe it really well or somehow make it accessible to your reader. Perhaps in digital journals this task would be made easier and historians would start using sounds to reinforce their arguments. The collection is a wonderful collection, and I can see many uses for it outside of academic history as well. Exhibits could be made more interactive with a sound component from the archive. Online visitors to the library’s website can use them for listening pleasure and find themselves learning about history at the same time, in a sensory way. And although the library currently prohibits commercial use, they would be great for artists, filmmakers, video game designers, and the like. They are rightly concerned about some of their sounds being used in a derogatory way towards those who made them, and there’s probably copyright issues as well. However, this potential user group has a lot of money, which the library desperately needs to have any hope of preserving the majority of the collection. Perhaps they could find a way to create specific restrictions that ensure the creators are respected and protect copyright holders so they can make some content available for commercial use and gain some money for preservation.
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