Cheryl Tipp, Curator of Wildlife and Environmental Sounds, writes: In Disney’s The Lion King, the young cub Simba finds himself in the midst of a terrifying wildebeest stampede. Though our little hero survives the ordeal, a stampeding herd of wildebeest is certainly a force to reckon with. Every year during…

This week’s selection comes from Jonathan Summers, Curator of Classical Music Recordings. Leonard Bernstein was born 100 years ago on 25th August 1918. In 1953 the young Bernstein made a series of LPs for the American Decca label. Already with aspirations as a music educator, Bernstein recorded lectures on the…

This week’s selection comes from Jonnie Robinson, Lead Curator of Spoken English. The Oxford English Dictionary categorises the use of while [= ‘until’] as northern dialect and, as this contributor to the Evolving English WordBank explains enthusiastically, such subtle distinctions in the way dialects assign prepositions can cause both confusion…

Cheryl Tipp, Curator of Wildlife and Environmental Sounds, writes: There are plenty of positives when it comes to digitising archival sound recordings. Long term preservation and improved access are top of the list, however the opportunity to easily explore thousands of freshly digitised files is a curator’s dream. The library’s…

Leonard Bernstein in the 1950s (Unknown photographer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons) By Jonathan Summers, Curator of Classical Music Leonard Bernstein was born 100 years ago this month. During the second half of the twentieth century he was the one figure that brought classical music to the general public in…