Listening to the archive: A cross-cultural analysis of European wildlife sound archives, 1950 to the present

Listening to the archive is a one-year project, which studies the history of nature sound recording through the two largest archives in Europe.

The British Library’s Wildlife and Environmental Sounds collection in London, and the Animal Sound Archive in the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin.

About

In the second half of the twentieth century, institutions across the world founded wildlife sound archives, consisting of audio recordings of wild and captive animals.

Facilitated by the advent of new recording technologies, these archives established themselves as important repositories of scientific data for bioacoustics research, which is the study of animal communication through sound, and as references libraries for the identification of animal species in the field by scientific taxonomists and wildlife enthusiasts.

This research project will focus on the two largest wildlife sound archives in Europe: The British Library’s Wildlife and Environmental Sounds collection, and the Animal Sound Archive at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin.

Through an analysis of written and aural archival materials, and interviews with key actors, this project explores the production and consumption of the two archives, and the sound recordings they are composed of.

Key info

• Start date: 2 January 2023
• End date: 1 January 2024
• Funding amount and funder: British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant £9,880

Aims

The project explores: how the two archives were created; how archived sound recordings are maintained, circulated, and consumed; and how sound recording technologies, techniques, listening cultures, and ethics have shaped the objectives, functions, and uses of archived sound recordings.

Project team

• Professor Sandra Jasper (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)