Happy Birthday to Rare Tunes Scottish Archive!

rareTunes - an archive of Scottish sound, is celebrating ten years as an independent internet sound archive of Scottish traditional music.

Do take a look - the website describes itself like this: "A curated audio scrapbook of recordings that range from near-studio quality to crowded and noisy house sessions, from digital media to old bits of tape, vinyl and obscure 78s."  And there are even some videos amongst the audio!

A National Sound Archive for Scotland: news from the National Library of Scotland

'Work is under way to develop a distributed national collection of Scotland's sound heritage. The Scottish Sound Archive will bring together the sound collections relating to Scotland held in a variety of organisations including museums, libraries and archives into a searchable single online resource.

'A further online resource allowing members of the public to upload sound recordings to the national collection will also be developed.  These services are set to vastly improve public awareness, access and interaction with Scottish sound collections.'  Read more on the National Library of Scotland web news pages.

George Ewart Evans - oral history at the British Library Sound Archive

RSAMD staff and students have access to the British Library Sound Archive via the British Library's Archival Sound Recordings website http://sounds.bl.uk/. Just one of the interesting collections at the Sound Archive is the George Ewart Evans oral history collection, and the BL is working on adding these recordings to the Archival Sound Recordings website . Find out more about it here. Read the Sound Archive's description of the collection:-

Around 200 recordings of interviews and songs made by George Ewart Evans, with about 170 interviewees, between 1956 and 1977. Also includes a small number of recordings by John Ridguard, Ginette Dunn and an unidentified male interviewer, with some self-recorded audio-letters to George Ewart Evans by Charles Kindred. Most recordings made in Suffolk, but a number in Wales, Ireland and Scotland. Principal subjects are rural life and agricultural work in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, folk beliefs about animals, medicine and witchcraft, folk and popular songs, entertainment and education in rural communities (with some material on domestic service, transport and mining).

Whittaker Live will alert patrons when the recordings become available online via the Archival Sound website: http://sounds.bl.uk/.