Established as a national collection in 1955, and part of the British Library since 1983, we have 6 million sound recordings, on over a million discs and thousands of tapes. The collections include published, unpublished and broadcast sounds from all over the world and cover the entire range of recorded sound from music of all genres, drama and literature performances, to oral history, accents and dialects, radio documentaries and wildlife sounds. Formats range from cylinders made in the late 19th century to the latest digital media.