First of all, this is a FABULOUS community. :-) I published a novel this year and I only wish this place had been around when I was writing it. It would have saved me hours of research on everything from typewriters to phonographs to talking dolls (not the posessed kind, the normal kind).
Okay. Here's why I'm ACTUALLY posting.
There was a question dealing with accents above and I felt I should share this site http://classweb.gmu.edu/accent/ with all of you. It's a speech accent archive featuring a lot of very useful notes on accents AND a lot of sound clips. It may be useful to get a feel for the intonation and way of speaking. It's by no means the GREATEST SOURCE EVAR!11! but it's definitely a good start and fun for quick reference.