The Sound Collections Database (SCD) is a national directory of archival sound collections, originally developed by the Radio Preservation Task Force (RPTF) of the Library of Congress’s National Recording Preservation Board (NRPB), in partnership with the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC).

This latest iteration of the SCD represents a new chapter in the project’s development. Rebuilt as a static website using GitHub Pages and guided by minimal computing principles, the current version is maintained and developed by the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) at the University of Maryland. The new platform emphasizes transparency, sustainability, and long-term stewardship of metadata describing historically significant and at-risk audio collections. This work was generously supported by a gift from the National Recording Preservation Foundation (NRPF).

The SCD remains a collaborative, evolving resource. We continue to seek out collections for inclusion and welcome contributions from institutions, scholars, and the public. To submit a collection to the database, use this submission form. The top of the form also contains instructions to enter a number of collections in bulk.

Project Leadership and Acknowledgments

This SCD site and data are currently overseen by Stephanie Sapienza (Digital Humanities Archivist) and Raffaele Viglianti (Senior Research Software Developer). The SCD Advisory Group includes Patrick Midtlyng, Brandon Burke, Yuri Shimoda, A.J. Bauer, and William Van Den Dries, who contributed their expertise to revisions and upgrades of the data model and collection submission workflows.

Previous versions of the database were developed using the open-source Blacklight framework, as part of a massive flagship RPTF initiative. We acknowledge the foundational work of the previous developers and contributors, whose efforts made this resource possible:

• Maria Matienzo
• William Van Den Dries
• Amanda Keeler
• Neil Verma
• Emily Goodmann
• Dylan Flesch
• Megan Kane
• Julia Peres Guimaraes

Project Background

For more background on the development of the database project, read E. Goodmann, M. A. Matienzo, S. VanCour and W. V. Dries, “Building the National Radio Recordings Database: A Big Data Approach to Documenting Audio Heritage.”