MJ Long, who died recently, was one of the key architects of the British Library. She was interviewed interviewed by Jill Lever for Architects’ Lives in 1997-98.

Coleridge Research Fellow Dr Alice Rudge writes: The Batek are hunting and gathering people who dwell in the lowland rainforests of Peninsular Malaysia. During my fieldwork with them, I played some recordings of mammal sounds which are held at the Library. Batek people have extremely detailed ecological knowledge of the…

Stephen recalls being in Manhattan on September 11 2001. Stephen’s account captures the shock of the attack but also an initial reflex attempt to carry on with the business of the day as if nothing had happened.

This week’s selection comes from Dr Paul Merchant, Oral History Interviewer. Nearly twenty years ago, on the 4th of March 1999, an interviewer working for BBC Radio Thames Valley’s contribution to the enormous BBC Millennium Oral History Project – ‘The Century Speaks’ – visited a local school to interview an…

Sony launched the first MiniDisc players and recorders in 1992. MiniDiscs were small (around 2¾” square) floppy-disk-style cartridges with an 80-minute recording capacity, intended to supplant the tape cassette format. Some major-artist commercial albums were issued as pre-recorded MiniDiscs, and the Library has a few examples of these in its…