I hope to spend a lot of time diddling around on the Library of Congress’ new National Jukebox site.

The site makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The recordings come from the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation collection, and other contributing libraries and archives. According to the Los Angeles Times, Sony Corp. is in the mix somehow, as well, presumably as a contributor to the collection.

Also according to the Los Angeles Times, the site logged more than 1 million visits within 48 hours of its launch. The site was launched Tuesday.

According to the Times:

The project has opened up the library’s archive with an initial posting of more than 10,000 pre-1925 recordings from the Victor record label, now under the Sony Music umbrella. The recordings span jazz, blues, ethnic folk, gospel, pop, spoken word, comedy and other genres dating to the early 20th century.

Who says government is good for nothing?