The South African Sound Archive

The Human Sciences Research Council commenced studying and describing the multilingual situation in South Africa in 1970. During five countrywide language surveys, approximately 10,000 tape recordings of the speech of language users throughout South Africa and South-West Africa were made. Sound recordings in the field of the arts have also been collected since 1970 to supplement the written and descriptive research material in a meaningful way. The HSRC fulfils a coordinating function for promoting research by universities and other interested bodies. The South African Sound Archives carries out this co-ordinating task by gathering valuable sound material in the field of the human sciences, indexing and retrieving it meaningfully for researchers, and preserving it for posterity. In this way the spoken word and musical sound assume their rightful places as research material that is on a par with the written word and fine arts. This report provides an exposition of the methods employed and serves as an aid and information document for researchers in the human sciences who wish to make use of sound material.