British Library Online - Sound Achives

Fascinating resource for sound, found online from the British Library website.

There's a great deal of content on here, from wildlife recordings, to regional dialects, to soundscapes (both urban and countryside).

The recording dates vary from present day to way back when, and all the links are found on a Google style map of the world where you can click on little balloons to bring up content. It's a bit of a lottery as to what you might discover, but that's a good part of its charm. Want to hear what a Gambian soundscape sounds like? Bingo.

I've been researching specifically for urban recordings to see if there's much variety to be found, as currently when recording in and around Elephant & Castle, the hum of traffic does a good job of masking anything that might be interesting, so looking for specific sound signatures that have been recorded and uploaded on here, might help me to look in the right places for sounds that can still thought of as unique to a specific area. Found a recording on the British Library website of Smithfield Market Atmosphere, from 1993, which I'm sure had a very distinct sound fingerprints. Note of caution, after a couple of listen to clips, you'll need your Uni Username & Password lo listen to more.