The Heritage Quay Listening Room is now open for researchers to explore over 90 years of music and sounds recordings from the archive!

Heritage Quay Listening Room

Music forms one of the most important strengths of the Heritage Quay collections and this is reflected by the sheer volume of audio recordings found within the archive. The British Music Collection itself contains over 21,000 individual recordings of 20^th and 21^st century British classical/art music, and the archive also holds extensive collections of sound recordings that relate to viol music, jazz, and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival hcmf//.

The volume and diversity of the recordings is also reflected by the variety of different audio formats that the recordings are stored on. The Heritage Quay Listening Room has been equipped with a range of professional playback and digitisation equipment to enable the long term access of these vital records into the future, regardless of format.

Analogue vinyl and audio cassette formats can be played and digitised to ensure preservation and to promote access

Access to the audio and written records of a collection allows us to get even closer to the subject; not just seeing/touching history but hearing it too!

The Listening Room is open to researchers during search room opening hours. Details about visiting the service can be found here.