A sound recording project led by the Truban Archives at Shenandoah County Library in Edinburg earlier this year received some great feedback from the community.

After challenging area residents or workers to make sound recordings on Jan. 3, the archives received a small variety from around the county.

They plan to hold onto the recordings to eventually upload to their website, http://archives.countylib.org.

“It actually went fairly well,” archivist Zachary Hottel said. “We received several entries from individuals in the county that sent in recordings,” he said. “The purpose of the project was to try to collect audio recordings of … the noise of the county.”

Feedback from those who participated was good, Hottel said.

“People seemed to really like the project and were happy to be able to contribute something different to the county’s history,” he said.

One recording, he recalled, was made at Seven Bends State Park in Woodstock. Some others were recorded in New Market and at least one in Strasburg.

“Some of them, depending on the location, are only nature sounds. There’s other types of noise going on, like cars driving by,” he said.

“Most of those were at people’s houses, so they’re in neighborhoods,” he said.

Participants were asked to record only the sounds of what was occurring, such as nature, animals, human voices or music.

The project is part of Shenandoah County’s 250th Anniversary Year, which has its official celebratory kickoff at a Birthday Bash from 6 to 8 p.m. March 26 at the Virginia Museum of the Civil War in New Market.

Though the anniversary sound project was only for that day, Hotel said the archives are always accepting examples of the county’s history in the form of letters, texts, postcards, photos, voice recordings or other audio recordings and physical objects.

On the library archives website, people can click on a link at the top of the page to contribute an item. So far, Hottel said, the archives have just over 35,000 digitized items relating to the county’s history.

Being able to add the anniversary sound recordings to the collection is special, he said.

“It was great for us because it was a chance to collect something unique.”

Contact the library at 514 Stoney Creek Blvd, Edinburg, 540-984-8200.