If you’ve been browsing the Internet Archive recently, you might have noticed a new search option called “Search radio transcripts”. You can now search through radio broadcasts as if looking up something in a book, it’s pretty neat!
How’s it work? Software is used to transcribe a broadcast into text, similar to how OCR programs can transcribe the text in a book. Once a broadcast has a transcript available, you’ll be able to search its contents; effectively being able to search through sound.
The feature does seem to be in a WIP stage, so you might encounter some inaccuracies. Also of note is that only broadcasts from the past 5 years or so are available, from selected collections.
Still, there’s over two million recordings waiting for you to hear their story! You can view the full “catalogue” of radio broadcasts which support this feature in the aptly named Radio Archive collection.
