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The National Library of France is the first musical research library in France. It has been accumulating audiovisual archives since 1911. The goal of its archive policy is twofold: patrimonial and encyclopedic. It represents all the history of the techniques of recording and reproduction of sound and all types of recordings including music, discourses, and ethnographic records. These documents are not very well-known to researchers who are not used to work with these types of supports. Three types of sources pertaining to sound recording are available at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France: the recorded sources include musical records, but also an important collection of "famous voices" recordings, and many records of dialects and folklores from all over world; the printed sources: books, periodicals, and label catalogs, indispensable complement to any in-depth research using the sound archive; and the online resources, available on the Bibliothèque Nationale de France web site through its digital library, Gallica.