Old Georgian audio archives going digital

Some of Georgia’s old audio archives from the National Parliamentary Library will soon be made available online in a digital format that will be affordable for everyone to access.

Georgia’s National Parliamentary Library is preparing to launch a new project named ‘Audio Library’, which aims to make limited national sound archives available for a wide audience.

The digitalisation of the audio files will allow all people with a passion for the past get reacquainted with old Georgian music, audio recordings of plays or movies. The audio files will held in a digital collection online on the website of the National Library.

National Library representative Ia Gorgisheli said the digital recordings will be from the Library’s archive, which had earlier been recorded on a vinyl record on LP format. In this state, the recordings could only be accessed by a small number of people.

"By [digitalising the archived audio] we want to promote the old and unique archives of audio recordings for everyone who has access to the Internet. [People] can visit our website, where all the digitalised audio materials will be presented,” she said.