National Recording Registry
- Areas Of Involvement:
- sound recording
National Recording Registry, list of audio recordings selected for preservation by the head of the U.S. Library of Congress in consultation with the National Recording Preservation Board. Every year, 25 recordings that are deemed to be, in the words of the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000, “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” are added to the registry. The selections include music, speeches, radio broadcasts, interviews, audiobooks, podcast episodes, and other recorded sounds. To be eligible for inclusion on the registry, a recording must be at least 10 years old.
The National Recording Registry was established through the National Recording Preservation Act, which authorizes the librarian of Congress to determine which selections meet the criteria for induction into the registry. The oldest selections in the registry date to the mid-1800s, while the most recent were created in the early 2010s.
Musical and nonmusical recordings
The National Recording Registry encompasses a wide variety of musical recordings. The official list of represented musical genres includes the following:
- children’s
- classical
- country/bluegrass
- disco/dance
- folk
- gospel
- jazz
- Latin
- musical/soundtrack
- pop (divided into several chronologically defined categories)
- rap/hip-hop
Among particular musical selections are a 1924 recording of the American composer George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue (as performed by Gershwin and the Paul Whiteman Orchestra), the American singer Queen Latifah’s 1989 debut album All Hail the Queen, and the Japanese composer Koji Kondo’s 1985 theme for the Nintendo game Super Mario Bros., the registry’s first video game sound recording.
Nonmusical sound recordings inducted into the registry include the October 30, 1938, radio broadcast of Orson Welles’s adaptation of The War of the Worlds (1898), the science fiction novel by H.G. Wells; Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s radio address to the Allied countries on D-Day (June 6, 1944), the first day of the Normandy Invasion; and astronomer Carl Sagan’s audiobook recording of his iconic work Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (both 1994). As of 2023 the registry contained 625 titles.
The Library of Congress does not own the recordings chosen for the registry. While a few are in the public domain, most are owned by individuals, a broadcast network, or a record label (i.e., a music recording company). Some of the recordings chosen for the registry have been preserved by artists, copyright holders, or other archives. Titles that have yet to be preserved are handled by the Library of Congress’s National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, either through its recorded-sound preservation program or through collaboration with other entities.
The National Recording Preservation Board and the National Recording Preservation Foundation
The National Recording Preservation Act of 2000 also created the National Recording Preservation Board (NRPB) and the National Recording Preservation Foundation. The NRPB’s mission is “to ensure the survival, conservation and increased public availability of America’s audio heritage.” The librarian of Congress chooses the members of the NRPB, which acts as an advisory group. The NRPB has more than 40 members, including representatives from the Songwriters Hall of Fame, the American Federation of Musicians, the Recording Industry Association of America, the Association for Recorded Sound Collections, and other organizations acting on behalf of musicians, composers, the recording industry, musicologists, librarians, and archivists. The librarian of Congress may also appoint up to five at-large members.
Nomination and selection of registry recordings
The public and members of the NRPB nominate recordings for the registry. The librarian of Congress makes the selections at the beginning of each calendar year after consulting with the NRPB. Selections are announced in February or March. The first selections were chosen in 2002. The librarian of Congress chose 50 recordings for induction during each of the years 2003–2006 and has chosen 25 recordings during every year thereafter.
Most registry recordings cannot be posted on the Internet because of copyright restrictions, but some are available at the online National Jukebox, which provides free access to recordings from the Library of Congress and other libraries and archives.