How do I schedule a listening appointment?

Listening Appointments

  • Appointments are required for listening to most of the material in our collection. Contact us two weeks before you plan to listen.
  • Recordings do not circulate.
  • Listeners can telephone the Research Center at (202) 707-7833, or submit an email request through rsrc@loc.gov or at https://ask.loc.gov/recorded-sound/ .
  • Patrons must present their Library of Congress Reader Registration Card, which can be obtained in Room LM-140, Madison Building.
  • Record notes and jackets may be requested.

A growing number of our recordings have been digitized and are available for listening on demand. All others will take at least two weeks for our engineers to digitize for your listening appointment. Special arrangements are required for requests of more than five items at one time. Certain audio formats will require more time to digitize and will necessitate a longer wait. Please contact the Research Center as soon as possible with large requests or to identify previously digitized recordings.

Patrons are able to use the Research Center without appointment to access the catalogs, reference books, archival collections, microfiche, microfilm and other reference sources.


Last Updated: Sep 03, 2020   Views: 338

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Send written correspondence to:

Recorded Sound Reference Center
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave. SE
Washington, D.C. 20540-4690

Please Note

We cannot provide lists of recordings in the public domain, perform copyright searches, provide extensive research including compiling discographies, provide language instruction tapes or books on tape for the visually disabled (see NLS), and/or offer appraisals.

Copyright Note: due to copyright restrictions the vast majority of sound recordings are not available online nor will they enter the public domain until the year 2067.