Dear MMDers,  If you are not familiar with the University of California
at Santa Barbara's early cylinder recordings preservation project, I
highly recommend it to you.  So there is no misunderstanding, we are
talking about Edison, Columbia and other manufacturers of phonograph
"cylinders"!

On this marvelous site you can search by title, composer, genre or
you may just listen to a daily topical stream and you may also "Adopt
a Cylinder" that has not been digitized and preserved as of yet.  The
archive list is large so adopting a cylinder (details on the site) is
graciously received.

The value to all of us is not only hearing early cylinders but
searching (as I've done) the various genres for a tune from a cylinder
box whose tune card is missing.  I've "matched" six tunes recently
that way _and_ I've been able to hear the "full" piece in its original
unedited length.

For fun I wanted to hear "Boccaccio March" ("Marche Boccaccio")
but found it was in their hands but had not yet been digitized.
I 'adopted' it and was pleased to hear it online shortly thereafter.
Useful and enjoyable!  http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/ 

Joe Berman