Welcome to the Endangered Archives Programme

Unless action is taken now, much of mankind’s documentary heritage may vanish - discarded as no longer of relevance or left to deteriorate beyond recovery. This website explains what the Endangered Archives Programme is, and how it can help.

Grants may be awarded to individual researchers to identify collections that can be preserved for fruitful use. The original archives and the master digital copies will be transferred to a safe archival home in their country of origin, while copies will be deposited at the British Library for use by scholars worldwide.

If you have a story to tell about how you have used the materials collected by EAP, please share it with us. Send us an email (endangeredarchives@bl.uk) and tell us directly, or send us a pointer to your article, book, blog post, artwork so that we can learn more about it. You are doing amazing things, and we want to know more!

What's New

• Welcome to our new website. Hopefully you will find it much easier searching and browsing through our collections. The site has a new look and feel which is accessible across most devices. It has improved search and displays high-resolution, zoomable versions of all our images. You may notice that some of the material is not yet available. This is temporary while we upload the remainder of the 6.5 million images. We would welcome any feedback you may have, please email us at endangeredarchives@bl.uk
• Professor Fallou Ngom has written West African Manuscripts in Arabic and African Languages and Digital Preservation for Oxford Research Encyclopedias' African History, illustrating his article with many EAP manuscripts.
• The 2018 call for applications is now open. Please check the preliminary application page for further information. This year the call for applications will close on 17th November 2017.

Highlights

• BL Sounds. Over 7000 Endangered Micronesian recordings are now online, charting the evolution of music in the region, with recordings ranging from religious chants and choirs to modern rock and reggae songs. We've also put two new South Asian record label collections online: 1404 recordings from the Odeon record label; and 1427 recordings from the Young India record label.
• The first sound recordings from EAP are now available online for free listening! Listen to nearly 8,000 recordings of the Syliphone record label archive in Guinea, or 1,296 recordings of the Golha radio programmes from Iran (‘Flowers of Persian Song and Music’), recorded between 1956 and 1979.
• In 2014,  ‘From Dust to Digital’ was published. It showcased the historical importance and research potential of EAP digitised collections. You can read about the publication in our blog, or read the publication itself: available as free online, free downloadable chapter pdfs, or purchase.