Archivists at the British Library are digitizing countless rare and valuable recordings of famous historical figures, such as Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, Mahatma Gandhi and the Aga Khan III. The recordings are currently stored on discs and wax cylinders, but by transferring them to CD format the BL will make the audio collection available to a global audience. "The sound recordings that we hold at the British Library aren't just of British interest. We have one of the largest collections in the world and in particular one of the widest collections in the world. We keep not only commercial discs, we have international music from all areas of the world, marvelous collections from Asia, we have some speech recordings also of international importance though naturally there we tend to focus on the English language," says BL project director Richard Fairman. The BL currently has about two dozen CDs available and next year plans to produce a disc of speeches by Albert Einstein, timed to coincide with his anniversary next year.
posted by Marcus Zillman |
4:00 AM
