£18.8m plan for ‘audio library’

A multi-million pound project will see the heritage of Scotland and regions around the UK being preserved in the British Library – by digitally recording their most unusual sounds.

A collection of dialects and accents, local stories, music, plays and wildlife from ten culturally significant cities will be recorded in order to map the country’s “audio heritage”.

The recordings will then be uploaded online and records kept in the British Library.

The Unlocking Our Sound Heritage project is set to cost £18.8 million to record and digitise approximately 5,000 sounds from across each region.

Organisers said it is expected that the project will start next financial year and conclude in 2022. The ten regions covered by the project will be Scotland, Tyne & Wear, Manchester, Norfolk, Leicester, Bristol, Wales, Northern Ireland, Sussex and London.