The UOSH project forms part of the core programme 'Save Our Sounds' led by the British Library and involving a consortium of ten regional and national archival institutions.
[1] In 2015, the British Library gathered information on the sound collections held by institutions, societies, associations, trusts, companies and individual collectors.
[4][5][6] The project was developed in response to, the very real, risk of losing historic recordings forever as the tapes and discs deteriorated, the increasing costs of old playback equipment and a lack of specialist skills.
[7][8][9] Between 2017 and 2022, the aim of the UOSH project has been to preserve, digitise and publish online thousands of rare, unique and at-risk sound recordings from the British Library as well as from other collections around the UK.
[11][6][12][13] The British Library alone houses over 6.5 million recordings,[14] which feature speech in all spoken languages, music, theatre, radio programmes, oral history, wildlife and environmental sounds from all over the world.
Some of the collections and recordings which will be digitised include: slang, dialects and accents from every social class and regional area in the UK, from the 1950s ‘Survey of English Dialects collection' to the ‘BBC Voices archive'; writers reading their own works, including Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Sylvia Plath and James Joyce; a collection held in the Canterbury Cathedral archives spanning 50 years of services, choral and opera performances; oral histories from World War I and World War II; pirate radio; sound recordings of British wildlife, coastlines and nature, for example calls of long extinct birds and a recording that helped to save the bittern from extinction in the UK; musical performances and theatre plays, including Laurence Olivier playing 'Coriolanus' in 1959; traditional, pop and world music; oral history interviews with people from all walks of life, ranging from Kindertransport refugees, migrant workers to second wave feminists and people with disabilities; radio broadcasts going back to the 1930s, including international pre-war stations such as Radio Luxembourg, Radio Lyons, Radio Normandie as well as early previously unheard BBC Radio recordings with American blues, gospel and jazz legends such as Louis Armstrong, Sonny Terry and Sister Rosetta Tharpe.
Some of the collections and recordings included in the UOSH project are: 'Manchester Studies oral history archive' created by academics at Manchester Polytechnic during the 1970s and 1980s; the 'Manchester Voices' accents and dialects project ('Manchester Metropolitan University'); interviews with a sword-swallower, a suffragette, the organiser of the Mass Trespass of Kinder Scout, grand-daughter of a woman who witnessed the aftermath of the Peterloo massacre; a gig by Paul Simon, and recordings of killer whales made in the waters surrounding Shetland held by the Centre for Wildlife Conservation at the University of Cumbria.
[17] The National Library of Scotland will be working with 17 different collection partners to digitise, catalogue and clear rights to showcase archival recordings online or on-site.
During the UOSH project, sound recordings on various formats including wax cylinder, vinyl, reel-to-reel tapes, cassettes and MiniDiscs will be digitised, catalogued and made accessible.
In spring 2020, it announced 20 commissions of £100 to enable composers, musicians and choirs to create new and unique works during the Covid-19 lockdown, by using digitised sound recordings from the collection as inspiration.
The aim was to create new interpretations of the sound collections, based on oral histories recorded from various parts of Wales, and present the work in new and exciting ways.
Highlights include many tales of folklore, featuring fairies, ghosts, banshees, cures, childbirth, weddings and wakes; extensive interviews on Ulster’s churches, religious societies, fraternities and traveller groups; past and present on Rathlin Island; diverse musical pieces, from the Belfast Harp Orchestra to blind fiddlers and Lambeg drummers; famous flautists James Galway and Matt Molloy, uilleann pipers Séamus Ennis and Liam O'Flynn, and traditional singers Maighréad Ní Dhomhnaill and Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh; accounts of domestic life, agriculture, fishing, turf-cutting, and the origins and vernacular buildings of the Ulster Folk Museum; stories of crafts such as embroidery, lacemaking and weaving; oral history interviews about various Ulster industries, such as textile and linen factories, and transport – from Harland & Wolff’s shipyards to champion motorcyclists, biker culture, Belfast’s black taxis and the DeLorean Motor Company factory; the loyalist lion-keeper, ‘Buck Alec’ Alexander Robinson; and 500-plus interviews of the Tape-Recorded Survey, a study of Hiberno-English dialects around Ireland in the 1970s.
Ian Paisley, John Hume, Richard Needham and Charles Haughey feature among the voices, few other recordings focus directly on the conflict.
Material is being preserved from collections held in Birmingham, Derbyshire, Herefordshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Rutland, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire.