[Corpora-List] audio recordings of doctor-patient consultations

[Lou Burnard]

Adam rather overstates the case. Martin Wynne and I visited the BL 
storage facility about 3 years ago, and can report that

(a) the tapes are not gathering dust. they are being properly looked 
after in appropriate storage conditions

(b) the labelling of the tapes within the BL cataloguing system maps 
directly to numbers used to identify  recording elements in the header 
of each text. To find the recordings for e.g. KS3, look in its header 
for <recording> elements, and then request the tape indicated by its n 
attribute (139401 in this case). This two step process is necessary 
because several of the texts (not this one, as it happens) are derived 
from multiple tapes.

I would also add that we found the BL staff very helpful and keen to 
promote use of the material. They won't let you copy the data and 
distribute it on your website, but that's not their fault!



  Adam Kilgarriff wrote:
> Harold,
> Painful story of the audio material from the BNC is that it is gathering
> dust in a set of boxes in the basement of the British Library.  The labeling
> of the tapes bears an extremely circuitous relation to any other
> documentation of the BNC that you are likely to be able to find, so there is
> little point in requesting the tapes relating to, eg, BNC file KS3.
> Confidentiality considerations make it unlikely that they will ever be made
> usefully accessible. (I looked into it a few years ago.) 
> 
> Adam
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> 
> On Thu, 25 Jan 2007, Harold Somers wrote:
> 
> 
>>Does anyone know where I might get hold of audio recordings of
> 
> doctor-patient dialogues. There are a few in the BNC, though I'd be
> surprised if they have kept the original tapes (I have asked them ...
> waiting for a reply). Can anyone suggest any other avenues?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>