Derek wrote: The BL has put lots of recordings online, although they don't seem to publicise this as much. As they now have most of the major field recording collections, the iniative has been left to them.

You're right about them not publicising it - this is the first I've heard of it.

A bit of googling and flitting round the BL site reveals this:

Traditional Music in England Main Page

And this:

Traditional Music in England - Collections

Not had time to poke around the site yet. The blurb on the main page says that some of the recordings can be listened to by any memeber of the public but others are only available to people accessing them via a higher or further education institute. Whilst it's great that they are there at all, what's all that about, I wonder?

Anyway, off to explore. I may be some time...

Nigel

PS - it might be good if there was a list of all the different online traditional music archives. I wonder where would be a good place for that to live - or whether in fact one already exists? Folkepedia perhaps?