Library archive streams calls of the wild

Very few people would know the sound of a northern grasshopper mouse when it stands on its hind legs and howls in Utah's desert.

"It makes this little tiny squeak, so high-pitched some of us can't even hear it. Then it howls," said Jeff Rice, a researcher at the University of Utah J. Willard Marriott Library. "It's a beautiful little creature out in the desert making this howl. It's kind of territorial but really very neat."

Sounds of the little-known species, as well as noises from 999 other animal species, are available online as part of the library's Western Soundscape Archive, made possible by a grant from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services.

The project to collect sounds from at least 1,200 Western United States animal species began when Rice, a sound recordist and radio producer, decided the sounds needed to be accessible in one place. Over the past year, he's had a lot of help from various individuals and organizations collecting sounds and making them available to the world online.

"One of the fascinating things about sound … is that everybody can take something away from it," Rice said, adding that a 5-year-old gets something out of hearing a frog croak that might be completely different from what a biologist gets out of the same sound.

Most people believe frogs just "ribbit," Rice said. "But there's really an amazing variety of frog and toad calls." The canyon treefrog, found in the deserts of southern Utah, he said, sounds more like a sheep.

Hearing the sounds can be beneficial for educational purposes, can be used as a guide to identify certain species in 11 contiguous Western states and can be used to further understand the effects of noise and other changes on natural environments.

"We build archives like Western Soundscape because the content is valuable to scholars, but we can also make it broadly accessible," said Joyce Ogburn, director of the U. library. "With digital technology, we are taking advantage of incredible opportunities to share new kinds of research expansively, both within the scholarly community and outside higher education."

The collection relies heavily on donors, including field guide author Kevin J. Colver and internationally known bioacoustician Bernie Krause, as well as the National Park Service and the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. Putting the sounds in one easily accessible place is one goal for the project, as are preserving the sound's heritage and educating people.

"You can learn what's out there in the world by listening to the sounds around us," Rice said.