Preserving the sounds of nature: the collection, digitization and dissemination of the British Library's wildlife sound recordings

The British Library holds one of the most comprehensive collections of wildlife and environmental sound recordings in the world. Formed in 1969 as a resource for scientists and amateur naturalists, the collection holds over 300,000 catalogued natural history sounds and continues to expand. This paper discusses the formation and development of the collection, from the earliest audio identification guides published in the 1930s to the thousands of unpublished field recordings made by scientists and hobbyists during the 1950s to the 1990s, as well as the transition to born-digital recording. It then examines the Library's five-year major digitization project, Unlocking Our Sound Heritage, whose aim was to digitize half a million unique and at risk sound recordings in response to increasing technological obsolescence. This included the digital preservation of over 100,000 natural history sound recordings that would, without this work, have eventually become silenced. Also examined is how digitization has been an integral aspect of improving access, both for the Library's curatorial staff and its global userbase. This digital ‘unlocking’ of content has resulted in sound recordings becoming more widely available to users who find new ways to work with the material, interpret its meaning and give new life to the original sounds. The paper concludes with the importance of retaining physical carriers post digitization, allowing for future re-digitization should technological advancements offer significantly superior transfers and safeguarding against the destructive effects of events such as cyber-attacks which have the potential to disable digital collections.