We have an extensive collection of spoken voice recordings that can be used for a variety of linguistic research purposes and for exploring English accents, dialects, and language variation and change.
About the collection
The British Library holds sound recordings that document spoken English over a period of more than 100 years. The recordings range from ‘performance’, such as speeches, literary productions, audio books, public talks and lectures to more ‘naturalistic’ speech data contained in linguistic surveys, oral history interviews and radio and television broadcasts. These recordings capture prestigious and vernacular varieties of spoken English and are a useful resource for academic linguists, school teachers and students, learners of English as a foreign language and creative audiences, including authors, actors, journalists and script writers.We hold unique unpublished sound recordings relating to several significant nationwide surveys of regional speech in the UK; most notably the prestigious Survey of English Dialects recorded in the 1950s, the audio component of the British National Corpus (1990s), BBC Voices Recordings (2004/5) and the Evolving English VoiceBank, created in 2010/11 by visitors to our Evolving English exhibition. In addition, the Library’s Oral History collections represent a rich source of spontaneous speech data recorded with speakers from a wide variety of backgrounds. Historic and contemporary recordings in our Drama and Literature and Radio collections provide evidence of performance and broadcast voices across time.
What is available online?
Several dialect collections are presented on our Sounds website. Most recordings are freely available for listening online though some are restricted to users in accredited higher education establishments.
Sounds Familiar? is a dedicated educational resource that celebrates and explores varieties of English in the UK.
You can also use the online Sound and Moving Image Catalogue to search for recordings.
What is available in our Reading Rooms?
The Listening and Viewing Service provides free public access to our collections of recorded sound and video in St Pancras.
The Sound Archive Information Service is based in Humanities - floor 2 in St Pancras, where books, discographies, periodicals and magazines are available on open access.
Further information
Jonnie RobinsonLead Curator, Spoken English
The British Library
96 Euston Road
London NW1 2DB
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)20 7412 7412
Email: jonathan.robinson@bl.uk
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