January 21, 2003 Librarian of Congress To Announce First List of Sound Recordings To Be Named to the National Recording Registry

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington will announce his selection of the first 50 historic sound recordings to be added to the first National Recording Registry at a press conference on Monday, January 27 at 11 a.m. in the Mary Pickford Theater, third floor, Library of Congress, James Madison Memorial Building, 101 Independence Ave., SE. The list will include a broad range of American commercial and archival recordings, across all genres and formats.

The National Recording Registry was established by the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000 (P.L. 106-474) "to maintain and preserve sound recordings and collections of sound recordings that are culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

The act also established a National Recording Preservation Foundation and the National Recording Preservation Board, composed of twenty composers, musicians, musicologists, librarians, archivists, and representatives of the recording industry, that advised the Librarian on his selections for the National Recording Registry. Nominations also were solicited from the general public.

The purpose of the registry is to draw attention to the need to preserve and restore America's recorded sound heritage. This heritage is threatened by the deterioration of most of the recording media invented in the last 100 years, including modern audio tape.