Cylinder Audio Archive
The Cylinder Audio Archive is a free digital collection maintained by the University of California, Santa Barbara Library with streaming and downloadable versions of over 10,000 phonograph cylinders manufactured between 1893 and the mid-1920s. The Archive began in November 2003 as the successor of the earlier Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Pilot Project.
History
The pilot project began in 2002 to test the feasibility of digitizing cylinder recordings on a large scale for preservation and public access and explore issues related to the preservation and digitization of cylinder records. In 2003, the
Scope
The Archive consists of a broad range of cylinder records manufactured between 1893 and the mid-1920s. The majority were produced by
The Archive currently holds only the cylinders in the collection of the UCSB Libraries. Other libraries, including the Library of Congress and Bowling Green State University, have contributed cylinders for preservation and digitization, as have private collectors. The Archive accepts donations of cylinders but at present does not add digital files of cylinders from other collections, the one exception being cylinders in the collection of John Levin.[citation needed]