World Libraries: The Library of Congress acquires Historic Radio and TV Sport Recordings

John Miley’s decades-long passion for sports led him to collect an extensive archive of historical moments in athletic competition. Miley and the Library of Congress have announced that his vast collection of sports broadcast recordings made prior to 1972—known in the sporting world as The Miley Collection—will reside among the collections in the world’s largest library. This acquisition represents the largest and most significant collection of sports broadcasts in America.

Miley’s collection includes more than 6,000 historic radio and television broadcast recordings of pre-1972 professional and amateur sporting events in every major area of athletic competition including Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, Olympic events, Indy 500 auto races, Triple Crown horse races, boxing, golf, tennis, and college football, basketball and baseball.

In addition to historic games, the archive is an audio gallery of the great sports announcers of the 20th century. In addition, there are audio recordings of television programs for which the video has been lost.

 "American life throughout most of the 20th century was immeasurably enriched by the radio and television broadcasts of amateur and professional sports events that had great national significance," said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington. "Unfortunately, many of those broadcasts were never recorded or otherwise saved for posterity. With the acquisition of the John Miley Collection, the Library of Congress now will be able to ensure the archival preservation of a collection that substantially documents the historical record of the nation’s sports broadcast history prior to 1972, when sound recordings were not protected by federal copyright law."

Now officially named the John Miley Sports Broadcast Collection, the archive of recordings spans the years 1920 to 1972 and includes some rare moments in sports history.