Twenty-five thousand songs recorded onto 78RPM discs in the early 20th century have been released online, for free.

They are the first batch of an estimate 400,000-piece virtual record collection to be made available by the Internet Archive, from gospel by the Tuskegee Institute Sings, to opera recorded in Italy, to novelty tunes by Spike Jones, to hot — though obscure — jazz.

The task of digitizing all of those old records is happening in Chestnut Hill.