Scholars Collaborate to Make Sound Recordings More Accessible

A project based at the University of Texas at Austin is on track to increase the accessibility and use of sound recordings by repurposing a tool originally developed to classify bird calls. The goal is to teach the tool how to classify sounds in a wide variety of existing recordings, and even to give scholars ways to visualize the sounds.

“When dealing with sound, there’s only one way to access it or move around, and that is to press play and listen to it real time. Otherwise you can’t get—f...