Launched today, the new British Library Sounds website at http://sounds.bl.uk lets you listen for free to 50,000 tracks of music, spoken words and environmental sounds. Listeners at licensed UK universities and colleges may additionally download tracks for their research.

Here are 10 'taster' clips:

Originally launched as a service for UK universities and colleges in 2007 as 'Archival Sound Recordings', with support of JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) under its Digitisation Programme, the new British Library Sounds site introduces a number of enhancements available to anybody:

• completely redesigned pages
• improved navigation
• new audio player with waveforms
• improvements for linking to pages
• improved sound maps
• and if you sign up for free registration, you can:
• add notes at specific points on the audio timelines
• create your own playlists
• add tags and 'favourite' specific tracks so that you can easily find them again on return visits to the site.

More information.

Feedback on the new site is welcome and will help us add further improvements to the site.