Our sense of hearing is one way we understand the world around us. Sound can also be the key that unlocks a person’s memory or pass on the culture and history of a people; the diverse sounds of nature and sounds around us in our lives are also an audile treasure chest. The Brutish Library has digitized its archival sound recordings and made them available through its website.

According to a promotional film for the British Library’s Archival Sound Recordings on Youtube, 11,700 sound files have been digitized, with these including nature, classical music, ethnic music from around the world and oral history. In particular the library waxes lyrical about the positive role played by the ethnic music in its collection in the passing on of cultural heritage. Uganda, in Africa, has a rich musical tradition however, the autocratic rule of Idi Amin in the 1970s caused much of its musical culture to be lost. In the sound archives, a graduate student from Uganda studying in the UK, Samuel Kahunde, found traditional music recorded by white researchers before independence. He invited young musicians to listen to music from the archive and enlisted the help of elderly people to advise them and the result was that tribal music, almost lost forever, was reproduced. 

The members of the TELDAP e-newsletter editorial team have tried using the Archival Sound Recordings. As well as allowing search according to preference, the system also has themed browsing. The sounds are played through Windows Media Player while complete metadata, including time provided, culture, archive number, time recorded and production unit is given.
TELDAP also has rich sound archives. For example, the bao songs of Penghu that more and more importance is being attached to, the ethnic music collected by Professor Hsu Chang-ru, linguistics archives, artistic works by master Taiwanese composer Li Tai-hsiang. These, and many other sounds that will be an audile treat, can be heard, free of charge, through VCenter or the Taiwan Digital Archives portal website. Center for Digital Humanities, National Taiwan University has, moreover, established the “Bird DJ” website on which, according to your preference, you can select from a list of digitized bird songs and produce your own music. It also has complete background information about the birds whose songs are featured on the website and eco-films, making it a clever e-learning platform suitable for nature education.