Recording of the week: A time for nursery rhymes

This week’s selection comes from Giulia Baldorilli, Sound and Vision Reference Specialist. If you could choose to go back in time, where would you go? Photo by Adam Winger on Unsplash. Nursery rhymes are something we never forget over the years. They hold memories of our school games and playful…

Recording of the Week: Filling in the gaps of the feminist movement in the 1980s – Southall Black Sisters

This week’s selection comes from Amal Malik, Community Research Intern for Unlocking our Sound Heritage. Content warning: this blog contains references to domestic violence. This Recording of the Week for International Women’s Day looks at the work of Southall Black Sisters activist and case worker Pragna Patel. ‘Let’s put race…

Recording of the week: A personal jazz mystery solved

This week’s selection comes from Jim Hickson, Audio Project Cataloguer for Unlocking our Sound Heritage. I’m a jazz nut. My mental soundtrack is often filled with anonymous changes and walking bass solos. But there is one particular song that has been buzzing around my head for years and years –…

Recording of the week: Dialect in children’s play

This week’s selection comes from Jonnie Robinson, Lead Curator of Spoken English. One of the fascinating aspects of children’s imaginative play, as celebrated on the Library’s Playtimes website, is how games and rhymes evolve and adapt to reflect time and place. Two British Library recordings of thumb war, for instance,…

Public libraries in the words of people who use, work in and run them

Dr Sarah Pyke reflects on Living Libraries, an oral history project that collected interviews on the institution of the public library in the UK.