British Library's blast from the past.

Byline: Daniel Griffin

British Library's blast from the past

Over the past two years, the British Library has embarked on a large-scale digitisation of its sound archives, making the content freely available online for the further and higher education communities. In the process, many rare and unique files have appeared for the first time.

The 11 sound collections on the website range in length and subject matter but broadly consist of in-the-field recordings such as painter David Rycroft's Africa and music academic Klaus Wachsmann's Uganda

Interviews make up the bulk of many of the collections, such as Art and Design, and the Oral History of Jazz in Britain. The Records and Record Players set focuses on contributors to developments in recording technology in the 20th century.

The African Writers Club collection is a series of radio programmes of social and cultural affairs recorded in London during the 1960s, while the Sony Radio Awards and St Mary-le-Bow political debates originate from recordings made at the time of broadcast or in a public space.

The Popular Music category originates from course material at the Royal Academy of Music, and attempts to give a broad background on the styles that influenced and blossomed within the UK music scene in the latter part of the 20th century.