And recording Archives
and recording Archives
The British Library’s “Sounds” Archive Presents 80,000 Free Audio Recordings: World & Classical Music, Interviews, Nature Sounds & More
Online archives, galleries, and libraries offer Vegas-sized buffets for the senses (well two of them, anyway). All the art and photography your eyes can take in, all the music and spoken word recordings your ears can handle. But perhaps you’re still missing something? “Geordies banging spoons” maybe? Or “Tawang lamas blowing conch shell trumpets… Tongan tribesmen playing nose flutes…,” the sound of “the Assamese woodworm feasting on a window frame in the dead of night”?
No worries, the British Library’s got you covered and then some. In 2009, it “made its vast archive of world and traditional music available to everyone, free of charge, on the internet,” amounting to roughly 28,000 recordings and, The Guardian estimates “about 2,000 hours of singing, speaking, yelling, chanting, blowing, banging, tinkling and many other verbs associated with what is a uniquely rich sound archive.”
But that’s not all, oh no! The complete archive, titled simply and authoritatively “Sounds,” also houses recordings of accents and dialects, environment and nature, pop music, “sound maps,” oral history, classical music, sound recording history, and arts, literature, and performance (such as J.R.R. Tolkien’s short discourse on “Wireless,” animated in the video below).
The 80,000 recordings available to stream online represent just a selection of the British Library’s “extensive collections of unique sound recordings,” but what a selection it is. In the short video at the top of the post, The Wire Magazine takes us on a mini-tour of the physical archive’s meticulous digitization methods. As with all such wide-ranging collections, it’s difficult to know where to begin.
One might browse the range of unusual folk sounds on aural display in the World & Traditional music section, covering every continent and a daunting metacategory called “Worldwide.” For a more specific entry point, Electronic Beats recommends a collection of “around 8,000 Afropop tracks” from Guinea, recorded on “the state-supported Syliphone label” and “released between 1958 and 1984.”
Other highlights include “Between Two Worlds: Poetry & Translation,” an ongoing project begun in 2008 that features readings and interviews with “poets who are bilingual or have English as a second language, or who otherwise reflect the project’s theme of dual cultures.” Or you may enjoy the extensive collection of classical music recordings, including “Hugh Davies experimental music,” or the “Oral History of Jazz in Britain.”
The category called "Sound Maps" organizes a diversity of recordings---including regional accents, interviews with Holocaust survivors, wildlife sounds, and Ugandan folk music---by reference to their locations on Google maps.
Not all of the material in “Sounds” is sound-based. Recording and audio geeks and historians will appreciate the large collection of “Playback & Recording Equipment” photographs (such as the 1912 Edison Disc Phonograph, above ), spanning the years 1877 to 1992. Also, many of the recordings---such as the wonderful first version of “Dirty Old Town” by Alan Lomax and the Ramblers, with Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger (below)---feature album covers, front and back, as well as disc labels.
The recordings in the Archive are unfortunately not downloadable (unless you are a licensed member of a UK HE/FE institution), but you can stream them all online and share any of them on your favorite social media platform. Perhaps the British Library will extend download privileges to all users in the future. For now, browsing through the sheer volume and variety of sounds in the archive should be enough to keep you busy.
Related Content:
The Alan Lomax Sound Archive Now Online: Features 17,000 Blues & Folk Recordings
Cornell Launches Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Animal Sounds, with Recordings Going Back to 1929
1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die: Stream a Huge Playlist of Songs Based on the Bestselling Book
Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness
- Portada
- Understanding Records Management
Understanding Records Management
Records management is “responsible for the efficient and systematic control of the creation, receipt, maintenance, use and disposition of records, including processes for capturing and maintaining evidence of and information about business activities and transactions in the form of records”. - ST/SGB/2007/5 Record-keeping and the management of United Nations archives.
We all rely on information to help us work effectively and to build the knowledge for ourselves and the Organization. Records management is the efficient and systematic control of the creation, receipt, maintenance, use and disposition of records. Records management is the process of identifying and protecting evidence, which comes in the form of records.
In this section, you can learn about how to define a record, and what the records lifecycle looks like.
What is the concept? |
| What does it mean to you? |
Information is “data, ideas, thoughts, or memories irrespective of medium.” Information sources are considered “non-records”: they are useful but do not provide evidence. Examples include journals, newspapers, publications, or reference sources not created by the UN. |
| If the item in question provides information only and does not provide evidence of an activity, decision, or transaction related to your work at the UN, you should destroy the information when you no longer need it. |
Documents are any “recorded information or objects that can be treated as individual units.” Examples include works in progress such as draft communications or “to do” lists, and transitory records such as emails confirming a meeting or acknowledging receipt of a document. |
| If a document is superseded by other documents, such as a draft report that is replaced by a newer version, and the first draft is not needed as evidence, |
Records are “information created, received, and maintained as evidence and information by an organization or person, in pursuance of legal obligations or in the transaction of business.” Examples include final reports, emails confirming an action or decision, spreadsheets showing budget decisions, photographs or maps of field missions, which need to be kept as evidence. |
| If you created or received the document in the course of your work and it provides evidence of an activity, decision, or transaction, you need to keep it as evidence, according to established UN retention schedules. That document becomes a record and must be stored safely so it remains accessible. |
Archives are those records that have been selected for permanent preservation because of their administrative, informational, legal and historical value as evidence of official business of the UN. Archives are very small but important subset of the UN’s official records. |
| UN ARMS is responsible for helping you manage your records in order to protect valuable evidence of UN operations. UN ARMS also ensures records with archival value are preserved and made available. |
What is the records lifecycle?
All information and records go through a lifecycle. Knowing what stages records go through helps with identifying the most important activities that need to happen to protect and properly organize the Organization's records.
The first phase - Create/receive - starts when records are either received from an external source or created internally. The objectives of this initial stage are:
Create complete and accurate records that provide evidence of the organization’s functions, activities, decisions, transactions, procedures, etc. |
Identify and apply an appropriate security classification |
Distinguish between records and non-record copies or working documents, to be able to appropriately segregate them in the filing system |
Place the record in an organizational classification scheme (or file plan) either in paper (e.g. in a filing cabinet or a binder) or in electronic version (e.g. on a shared drive or in a system) to ensure that it’s preserved within its context |
After the first phase records immediately enter an Active phase of the lifecycle. It means that they are often used, shared between colleagues, retrieved to support day-to-day business and referred to. The objectives of this stage are: Create complete and accurate records that provide evidence of the organization's functions, activities, decisions, transactions, procedures, etc.
Identify and apply an appropriate security classification |
Distinguish between records and non-record copies or working documents, to be able to appropriately segregate them in the filing system |
Place the record in an organizational classification scheme (or file plan) either in paper (e.g. in a filing cabinet or in a binder) or in electronic version (e.g. on a shared drive or in a system) to ensure that it's preserved within its context |
Preserve the integrity of the record, which means ensuring that it has not been altered after completion |
Maintain its usability which means making it available for all colleagues who need an access to the record to do their job |
Facilitate identification and preservation of records with permanent retention |
The active phase of the lifecycle may be short for some records (e.g. payroll records' active phase usually is only about two months) and long for others (e.g. a MoU between a field mission and a Host country government may be in its active stage for the entire duration of the mission’s operations). All records, however, move through the lifecycle and with time the retrieval rate often diminishes. At some point, they reach a stage when they are not needed anymore in the primary office space but must still be kept for evidentiary, legal, financial, or historical purposes, as dictated by the retention schedule. This is when they enter an Inactive phase of the lifecycle. During this stage, we should free up space in our offices to new records, but we need to ensure keeping inactive records handy. The objectives of this stage are:
Identify the records that are not required to be stored in the primary office space (paper) or systems/shared drives (electronic) |
Organize and list them |
Transfer them to the local Records Center (for field missions the local Records Center within mission area; for HQ offices the ARMS Records Center) |
Retrieve only those records that are needed from time to time |
Finally, at the end of the lifecycle, records enter the stage a decision is made (usually based on an approved retention schedule) on what happens with records that entered the final stage of their life. It's called a Disposition phase. In the United Nations, there are two available disposition actions: either Archive or Destroy. It means that some portion of the records, usually about 5% of the total records' holdings of an office or a mission, that due to their historical value have a permanent retention, will be transferred to ARMS while the rest will be destroyed at some point. The objectives of this stage are:
Identify records with archival value (permanent retention), list them, organize them and sent them to ARMS |
Identify records due for disposal/destruction, list them, gather necessary approvals for the destruction and proceed with an environmentally friendly destruction process |
THE UNITED NATIONS HEADQUARTERS IS CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC AND ACCESS TO THE RESEARCH ROOM IS TEMPORARILY SUSPENDED
The Reading Room is closed until further notice as a part of the effort to limit the possible transmission of COVID-19. Our records are available for public research through Archives portal
Email us with requests for any services, and any feedback on our website or experience with the UN Archives and Records Management Section. For more information about the United Nations response to COVID-19, please visitun.org/coronavirus
WHAT WE DO
The United Nations Archives and Records Management Section:
- Provides records and information management services to the UN Global Secretariat
- Preserves and provides access to the Organization’s historical archives
You can access UN archives online and in our Public Research Facility at United Nations Headquarters in New York City.
Search the Archives
Explore the archives of the United Nations. Our collections of documents and photographs cover four broad areas: The Secretaries-General, Secretariat Departments and Offices, Peacekeeping and Field Missions, and Predecessor International Organizations. We have arranged them into groups based on which office created them.
Exhibitions and Outreach
Our Exhibition and Outreach programme promotes awareness of UN archives and the work of the Archives and Records Management Section. We also promote our archival collections and the history of the UN in magazine and journal articles, social media and blog posts, and by conducting tours. Knowledge of the past creates a better future!
Management of UN Records
The Archives and Records Management Section (ARMS) is responsible for advising UN entities and staff on all aspects of record-keeping and supporting the management of UN records throughout their lifecycle, from creation to their identification and preservation as archives.
Learn
Our e-Learning platform provides an in depth understanding of the importance of records and information management for UN staff. It covers the lifecycle of information, relevant policies and best practices, and gives guidance on managing and sharing information, including when it is sensitive.
Field Information Management
Managing records and information is critical to decision-making, providing evidence of activities, ensuring that sensitive information is protected and shared appropriately in Field Operations. It also keeps the Organization accountable. This guidance is applicable to Peace Operations, Special Political Missions and UN Good Offices.
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