User-generated audio field recordings

Basic description	Made on portable digital recorders, handheld devices and smartphones, this collection of born-digital audio field recordings submitted by the public presents a number of challenges for secure and efficient preservation. Created on a variety of unspecified recording devices, audio files forming this collection are comprised of multiple, proprietary and esoteric audio file formats and containers; some with embedded metadata, some corrupted during upload, and some with incorrect file extensions. An efficient solution for the validation, description and normalization of these files is sought, ideally through the use of a single software tool.
Licensing	The British Library Board
Institution	British Library
Collection expert	Adam Tovell
List of issues	Identification and validation of multiple, esoteric and proprietary file formats. Identification of file corruption. Extraction of technical metadata to usable textual data for archival and cataloging. Extraction of ID3 metadata to usable textual data for archival and cataloging, if present. Normalization to equal-resolution WAV files for archival.