What can I do in the online archive?

What do I need to search and to play recordings?

Search

• To play a sound or video that you have selected in a search, all you need is the  Adobe Flash plug-in version 9 or higher installed on your browser. Most browsers come with Flash installed, but you may want to update your browser to the newest version. To play back a sound or video without visualization, select

or

 

When the window opens to show the playing strip,

click on the forward arrow on the left end of the strip to start the playback and again on the pause symbol  ||  to stop it.  For a video, you can start playback with a click on the forward arrow in the playing strip or on the forward arrow in the middle of the movie screen. You can stop playback and move the cursor to go back and replay any earlier portion.

Visualize

• To view the waveform, spectrogram, and/or power spectrum of a sound during playback, you need to have Apple QuickTime  version 7.0.3 or higher installed on your computer, and you need to install the RavenViewer plug-in. To play back a sound or video with audio visualization, select

or

When the window opens, the browser will automatically start playing the sound or video using its default settings. You can start and stop the playback and move the cursor to any starting point just as you do with the simple playback described above.  If you want to change the viewer settings, see the RavenViewer Details.

Why can't I play some recordings?

Some recordings have a gray 

or

button.

Here's why:

• The recording isn't digitized yet. We are still converting recordings from tape to digital. About half of the collection is now digitized, and playable online.

• The recording is currently restricted. We sign contracts with the wonderful people who record these sounds and videos, and we agree to respect their rights. If you would like to put your animal recordings online, please let us know!

Listen & Watch

Here are some recordings to get you started:
Baby Harp Seal   Tufted Titmouse   California Sea Lion

Where's all of the metadata?

We keep track of dozens pieces of data for each recording. This includes information on the subject of the recording, its behavior, where the recording was made, and other internal information such as ID numbers and archival information.

We've gathered up most of the good stuff and made it available on each recording's summary page.

Here's an example

We display only those data that have been checked for accuracy. Our archivists are releasing more clean data to the public every day.

To view data not yet available online, just contact us!