Natural sound archives: past, present and future

Recordings of wild animals were first made in the Palearctic in 1900, in the Nearctic in 1929, in Antarctica in 1934, in Asia in 1937, and in the Neotropics in the 1940s. However, systematic collecting did not begin until the 1950s. Collections of animal sound recordings serve many uses in education, entertainment, science and nature conservation. In recent years, technological developments have transformed the ways in which sounds can be sampled, stored and accessed. Now the largest collections between them hold altogether around 0.5 million recordings with their associated data. The functioning of a major archive will be described with reference to the British Library Sound Archive. Preserving large collections for the long term is a primary concern in the digital age. While digitization and digital preservation has many advantages over analogue methods, the rate of technology change and lack of standardization are a serious problem for the world's major audio archives. Another challenge is to make collections more easily and widely accessible via electronic networks. On-line catalogues and access to the actual sounds via the internet are already available for some collections. Case studies describing the establishment and functioning of sound libraries in Mexico, Colombia and Brazil are given in individually authored sections in an Appendix.