BBC World Service: "Save Our Sounds" project

Recordings of 56k modems, dot-matrix printers and floppy disk drives sought

15 June 2009 16:46 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

The BBC World Service has launched a "Save Our Sounds" project that is looking to archive sounds that may be lost due to the march of progress.

A global project, a blogger for the BBC World Service says: "There are so many photographs and words to capture the world, but barely anything in sound. We want to put that right and so we're asking people to help us preserve 'endangered sounds' by recording them and sending them in to us".

An interactive map has been created that lets users click on the relevant spot to upload MP3 and WAV audio files, while listeners can click around the world in sound.

In addition, iPhone owners can use free app AudioBoo that lets users record and upload sound. Tagging the sound with "BBC_SOS" means it gets fed directly to the map administrators.

At the moment, through the World Service's "Digital Planet" show, the project is asking for recordings of what 56k modems, dot-matrix printers and floppy disk drives sound like.

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