British Library launch campaign to save sound archive at a cost of £40m

A grand proportion of Britain's sound archive has been deemed at risk of being lost due to physical degridation and the loss of technology on which to play the recordings.

The British Library has estimated that 65-70% of the country's published music output, along with 92% of the country's radio output, is not being fully archived.

The archive holds music on over forty formats, and around two million of these fragile and rare recordings are considered at risk, including recordings such as the voice of Florence Nightingale and full theatre productions going back forty years.

The British Library has estimated that to digitise and preserve the most "at risk" recordings, and build the facilities to do the same for the remainder of the collection, it would cost around £18m. The remainder of the funds (that's £22m) will be used to develop a system for digitally archiving in the future.

Alongside this campaign, the institution is calling for any rare or unique sound collections in order to create a national directory which will identify other threatened collections.

[via BBC]