The British Library has one of the most remarkable aural collections in the world. The Archival Sound Recordings project will make nearly 4,000 hours of this material available online. Musical items include versions of the Beethoven quartets, pop songs of the past 50 years and the sounds of South African townships. Interviews with post-war African writers, visual artists and British jazz players come under “Oral History”.
Although the project is mainly for users in FE and HE, sample materials such as the voices of Paul Robeson as Othello and of Florence Nightingale are well worth hearing.
www.bl.ukcollectionssound-archivearchsoundrec.html