Listen In: Restoring Ancient Recordings at the British Library

This past weekend's edition of NPR's "All Things Considered" featured a visit with librarians at the British Library who are in the process of salvaging some 6 million+ sound recordings before they become so decayed that they are no longer audible. NPR's visit includes a few audible gems, including a sample of Alfred Lord Tennyson reciting poetry and George Bernard Shaw speaking directly to listeners while they adjust the speed of the disc. From NPR:

History is literally fading away in London right now.

Many of the items in The British Library's vast collection of recorded sound are in danger of disappearing. Some just physically won't last much longer. Others are stored in long-dead formats.

In the future, a hard drive full of photographs may serve as the digital analog of a pile of old pictures.

But those sounds can be salvaged — for instance, the library has managed to save one of the few recordings of Florence Nightingale, which is preserved from an 1890 wax cylinder.

The British Library is currently asking for donations to help raise the $60 million it'll take to digitally preserve their entire collection.

Will Prentice is one of the people tasked with saving these recordings. He tells NPR's Arun Rath that there is only a finite window of opportunity to preserve many of the sounds.

"That's actually about 15 years," Prentice says, "which seems like a long time, but we have over 6 million sound recordings in the British Library." [...]

Listen to a few samples from the archives at NPR.