Heya, LMTers!
It's already a bit of old news at this point, but the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia have digitized and made available a huge (
huge!) collection of their 78 rpm records on the Internet Archive, available here:
https://archive.org/details/78rpm_nsfaThis collection, among many other historic recordings, contains both audio recordings and photos of a massive amount of old library records, with material from Boosey & Hawkes, Bosworth, Brunswick, Conroy, EMI, Music-De Wolfe, Harmonic (C. Brull), Impress, KP Music/KPM, Major Records, Macquarie, Mood Music (FDH), Paxton, Rondex, Sonaura, Southern, Synchro, Theme Music (JW), TransWorld, Ultra Music Services (UMS) and Video Moods (did I miss any?), as well as a bunch of vintage sound effects records.
Having collected a good chunk of 78s myself over the years, I know first-hand not only how incredibly elusive some of these are - having the ability to browse a near-full run of Impress 78s is entirely unprecedented - ... but also what a hassle these are to both transport, store and digitize.
We're being completely spoiled here, essentially - thank you, Australia! <3
