If your goal is to hear or study the content of early sound recordings, these collections are a good place to start. Both discs and cylinders are covered.
10,000+ recordings on the Victor label made from 1901-1925, including jazz, popular music, novelty recordings, opera, political speeches, and sound effects
Among the library's digitized commercial recordings are West African Decca, Young India and Odeon recordings from the Indian subcontinent, and Guinea's state-funded Syliphone label
Digitized recordings from the collections of La Bibliothèque nationale de France, including early cylinder collections, spoken word recordings, and recordings issued by the Italian Fonotipia label