PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] —An album of field recordings by Jeff Titon, professor emeritus of music, is among 25 sound recordings recently selected for induction into the Library of Congress’ 2014 National Recording Registry.

A selection of recordings is chosen for the registry each year based their cultural, artistic, and/or historical significance to American society and the nation’s audio legacy. Other inductees to the registry this year include recordings by Joan Baez, Sly Stone, and Steve Martin.

Titon’s album, Old Regular Baptists: Lined-Out Hymnody from Southeastern Kentucky (Smithsonian Folkways, 1997), is a selection of religious songs of the Old Regular Baptists who reside in the heart of the coal-mining country of the Southern Appalachian Mountains. This worship music was the common way of singing sacred song in the American colonies and is known as the oldest English-language religious music in the North American oral tradition.

“Beyond preservation in an archive, this recognition will help the Old Regular Baptists redouble their own efforts to continue their musical traditions in the face of cultural, economic, and environmental threats,” Titon said. “For 150 years they have been successful in resisting change to their singing and other aspects of belief and practice, but today they face new threats because of the region’s dependence on a single declining industry (coal mining) and because of that industry’s increasing reliance on mountaintop removal, which is causing floods and earthquakes and wreaking havoc in the regional ecosystem.”