Jonnie Robinson, Lead Curator of Spoken English, writes: This year marks the sixth annual British Library Sports Word of the Year (SWOTY) review. While I can’t claim it’s a major fixture on the annual awards circuit, six does, at least, have some sporting significance: six games in a tennis set;…

AWATE joined the British Library this summer as Artist-in-Residence for Unlocking Our Sound Heritage, the British Library’s major project to digitally preserve and widely share the nation’s rare and at-risk sounds. During his five-month residency, AWATE will use the extensive sound archive to weave together a long-form genre-bending musical piece…

This week’s selection comes from Steve Cleary, Lead Curator of Literary and Creative Recordings. Apologies, this may be our shortest ever ‘Recording of the Week’. It does however provide an excuse to highlight a colourful product of the late 1960s countercultural arts scene centred in and around Ladbroke Grove, London….

BBC Radio Leicester broadcasts fronted by archaeologist Alan McWhirr, a ground-breaking oral history archive of the lives of ordinary Mancunians, historical recordings relating to the countries of the British Empire and Commonwealth; these are just a few of the rich audio collections being digitally preserved through Unlocking Our Sound Heritage’s…

This week’s selection comes from Cheryl Tipp, Curator of Wildlife & Environmental Sounds. Most of the library’s wildlife recordings focus on the sounds of wild animals, whether that be singing birds in the Australian outback, echolocating dolphins in the Caribbean Sea or stridulating insects in the English countryside. It’s not…