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It's one of the biggest record collections in the world - and it鈥檚 all ours. The publically available British Library Sound Archive in London contains everything from chart-topping CDs to 19th-century wax cylinder recordings, and a vast digitisation project is under way to preserve the rarest recordings forever. We sent music journalist and obsessive record collector Mark Ellen to find out more.

鈥淪ound recording is really a modest form of time travel,鈥� says Will Prentice, Head of Technical Services, Audio and Vision at the British Library 鈥� and he should know, having spent hundreds of hours digitising the nation鈥檚 most treasured sounds.

At a whopping 7 million recordings, spanning 150 years, the British Library owns one of the largest collections of recorded audio in the world.

But the library finds itself at a critical point in its 110-year history. With the rapid advancement of playback technology, the machines that can play tapes, discs and cylinders are hurtling towards obsolescence.

That, coupled with the ever-expanding nature of the collection, has led to the library launching a campaign 鈥� Save Our Sounds 鈥� to help raise a much-needed injection of funds.

Will believes the future of any sound archive will be about what to exclude. He says: 鈥淭here are more sound recording devices in Britain than there are people. Mostly we carry them around in our pocket without thinking about it.鈥�

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