The animal sound archive of the Humboldt University of Berlin is one of the oldest and largest bioacoustic collections in Europe. It was founded in October 1951 by Gunther Tembrock. Now it contains around 300,000 cuts. 580 species of mammals, 1800 species of birds, and some reptiles, amphibians, fishes and arthropods are represented. The collection includes recordings made in the field and in zoological gardens. Most of the field recordings are from Germany. In addition there are original recordings from Poland, the Caucasian region, Karelia, Mongolia, North America, Africa and the Antarctic. The archive has always been the base for scientific research in the field of acoustic communication of animals. Therefore, most of the recordings are well documented as to the behaviour during vocalizations. In the last few years we have started to catalogue the recordings, using a data base system. In this way the recordings of the last three years have been registered. Nearly all recordings are on ¼ inch tapes. In the future we intend to transform the recordings to optical discs. More than 100 Masters or Ph.D. theses have been based on recordings from the sound archive, which is available for all scientists working on acoustic behaviour of animals.