Collection guides

Asian Britain: music and audiovisual

Rich and wide-ranging collections, especially of music and recorded sound

Black Britain: music and audiovisual

Rich and wide-ranging collections, especially of music and recorded sound

Classical music recordings

Recordings in the western concert tradition, opera, liturgical music, and the pre-Baroque repertories of Western Europe

Covid-19 collections

Collections relating to the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.

Drama and literature recordings

A unique collection of audio-visual recordings of drama, poetry and literature in performance

English accents and dialects

We have an extensive collection of spoken voice recordings

Forced Entertainment

Over 300 video recordings of performances, workshops and rehearsals

Music manuscripts and archives

Sources for vocal and instrumental works from the Middle Ages to the present

Music recordings

Our vast collection includes commercial discs, tapes of radio broadcasts, and rare or unpublished recordings

Oral history

One of the largest collections of oral history and life story interviews in the world

Poetry Pamphlets

Poetry pamphlets published by independent presses.

Pop music recordings

We hold one of the most wide-ranging collections of popular music in the world

Radio broadcast recordings

200,000 hours of radio recordings dating back to the first decade of broadcasting

Wildlife and environmental sounds

The largest collection of its kind in Europe and the most comprehensive in the world

World and traditional music collection

We hold one of the world's largest collections of recordings variously described as traditional, folk or world music