It was announced on Wednesday that the British Library has secured £9.5m from the Heritage Lottery Fund for its Save Our Sounds project.

The funding will enable the British Library to digitise 500,000 rare, unique and at-risk sound recordings from its own archive and other key collections around the country over 5 years (from 2017 to 2022) and make them available online.

The £9.5 million will enable the British Library to:

• digitise and publish online up to 500,000 rare and unique sounds from the Library’s own collections and those around the UK which are most at risk, including local dialects and accents, oral histories and previously unheard musical performances and plays, and vanishing wildlife sounds
• work with partner institutions to develop a national preservation network via ten regional centres of archival excellence which will digitise, preserve and share the unique audio heritage found in their local area
• run a major outreach programme to schools and communities to celebrate the UK’s sound heritage, and raise awareness of this treasure trove of living history held in archives across the country

For further details, visit the Sounds our Sounds projects page: www.bl.uk/projects/save-our-sounds

British Library sound archives (photo by Clare Kendall)