The Archive began in November 2003 as the successor of the earlier Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Pilot Project.
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.
[citation needed] The Archive consists of a broad range of cylinder records manufactured between 1893 and the mid-1920s.
The majority of the cylinders feature music and include band recordings, popular songs, vaudeville, opera arias, and music for solo instruments such as banjo, violin and accordion, but the Archive also contains speeches, comedic monologues and home recordings.
[citation needed] The Archive currently holds only the cylinders in the collection of the UCSB Libraries.