The Sound Recordings catalog comprises over 17,400 digital audio files, beginning with Lomax’s first recordings onto (newly invented) tape in 1946 and tracing his career into the 1990s. In addition to a wide spectrum of musical performances from around the world, it includes stories, jokes, sermons, personal narratives, interviews conducted by Lomax and his associates, and unique ambient artifacts captured in transit from radio broadcasts, sometimes inadvertently, when Alan left the tape machine running. Not a single piece of recorded sound in Lomax’s audio archive has been omitted: meaning that microphone checks, partial performances, and false starts are also included.

Provides access to videos covering every region of the world and including interviews, previously unreleased raw footage, field notes, and study guides related to the study of human culture and behavior.

The Global Jukebox presents traditions that are linked to the roots of the world's peoples. Alan Lomax called it a "democratic cultural system". The visitor may explore collections of music, dance, and speech from almost every corner of the globe, recorded by hundreds of pioneering ethnographers at times when mass communications were less pervasive than now.

Provides access to streaming video supporting classes in the arts, business, health, media/communication, science, humanities and education.
NOTE: Effective October 1, 2018, Kanopy video access is mediated. This means that any video not licensed for use prior to that date will require the user to request access. Access is being enabled for class use with instructor approval.

Includes the published recordings owned by the non-profit Smithsonian Folkways Recordings label and the archival audio collections of Folkways Records, Cook, Dyer-Bennet, Fast Folk, Monitor, Paredon and other labels. It also includes music recorded around the African continent by Dr. Hugh Tracey for the International Library of African Music (ILAM) at Rhodes University as well as material collected by recordists on the South Asian subcontinent from the Archive Research Centre for Ethnomusicology (ARCE), sponsored by the American Institute for Indian Studies.