Report: “A Temple of Sound Awaits in the UCSB’s Collection of Early Music and Sound Recordings”

From The Los Angeles Times:

Located in a wing of the UC Santa Barbara Library, about a quarter mile from the Pacific Ocean, the university’s collection of early music is the most extensive on the West Coast. Descend in an elevator a few stories underground with David Seubert, curator for the Performing Arts Collection at UC Santa Barbara Library, into the Cylinder Audio Archive, a windowless, climate-controlled storage facility purpose-built to hold wax cylinders and 78-rpm records and, after adjusting to the 10-degree temperature drop, a temple of sound awaits.

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Under Seubert’s guidance, 10,000 of these cylinders have been digitized and made available for streaming and download — for free — at the archive’s online portal: there are string quartets, spirituals, musical theater and humorous recitations; Mexican corridos from 120 years ago; whistling songs, yodels, zarzuelas and minstrel music; polkas, sermons, waltzes, marches and rags.

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Direct to Cylinder Audio Archive

See Also: UC Santa Barbara Library’s Historical Recordings Database Adds Linked Data; Over 30,000 Sound Recordings Available to Stream Free-of Charge