Today’s site is the Western Soundscape Archive! It is an extension of the J. Willard Marriot Library at the University of Utah that collects audio recordings (soundscapes) of the animals and environments that exist throughout the western part of the United States.
The recordings are divided into three categories: individual species, ambient soundscapes (environment sounds), and interviews. The states included in the collection are: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming, and in addition they do some basic monitoring of sounds in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.
There are a lot of navigation options, the main landing page offers the option to search the collection via a search field, browse all the currently available sounds via a link, and a category search. In addition, they have very interesting featured content like sound maps, spectrograms, and a rotating menu of featured soundscapes. Navigation occurs either through use the search option or links, or tabs at the top of the page. The tabs are Home, About, Collections, Maps, News, and Contact.
The Home section takes users back to the main landing page from anywhere on the site.
The About section explains the archive, its focus, and who they are supported by and collaborate with.
The Collections section provides access to the three main collections – Arctic Collection, Spectrograms, and Species Distribution Maps.
The Collection page also has thumbnails that users can click that open a pop up window that lets the user play a sound clip of the animal featured on that thumbnail.
The Maps section repeats the navigation for the Species Distribution Maps and the Sound Gallery, but also offers you the ability to navigate Sounds by State – a large map with pins on it that you can click to investigate the sound for that area.
The Contact section offers you the ability to contact the archive via email or postal mail.
I thought this was a cool archive dedicated to sounds. Go check it out for yourself today!
~Amanda
Hey Amanda,
Glad you are back, sorry for your loss.
Wow! Info U put together explains things very well. [where, when, why, how etc.] If persons don’t understand – maybe they should go back to “ping-pong”¿