SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- The record albums that Cristobal Diaz Ayala
                 has collected fill shelf after shelf, room after room.

                 Over a quarter-century, the music historian has amassed 42,000 records plus
                 thousands of tapes and reams of sheet music at his home in Puerto Rico. It is from
                 throughout Latin America, from danzas to boleros, but its largest component is the
                 music of Cuba, where Diaz Ayala was born.

                 Experts say the 72-year-old former lawyer and real estate developer has perhaps the
                 largest collection of Cuban music in the world.

                 Last week, he began loading records into boxes for shipment to Miami's Florida
                 International University, to which he is donating the collection.

                 "I feel relieved, but at the same time I feel sad," he said. It isn't easy to let go of a
                 life's work.

                 But Diaz Ayala has decided that when he dies he wants the world to have access to
                 his collection. He chose the university in part because it agreed to post his
                 discography of Cuban music from 1925 to 1960 on the Internet. It is about 4,000
                 pages long.

                 "His priceless collection is, by my judgment and that of other colleagues, the largest
                 and most complete in the world," said Rodolfo de la Fuente Escalona, a singer,
                 songwriter and expert on Cuban music who lives in Havana.

                 De la Fuente said the collection would be less precious if it hadn't had "an intelligent
                 mind to organize it, and a generous heart to share it." Diaz Ayala, he said, "is the
                 guru, the great teacher of Cuban musical history."

                 Valued at nearly $1 million, the library includes records picked up in places from
                 Argentina to New York.

                 The collection began as a hobby but grew so large that Diaz Ayala worried the floor
                 of his fourth-story apartment in San Juan could collapse in an earthquake. So, in
                 the 1980s, he bought a two-story house to hold the music.

                 Diaz Ayala works most days in the small office above his library, click-clacking out
                 notes with the Smith-Corona typewriter he has used to write five of his six books.

                 As a boy in Havana, he listened to bands at a cafe on the Malecon coastal highway.
                 He studied at the University of Havana law school with Fidel Castro but left the
                 country in 1960, shortly after the triumph of Castro's revolution.

                 Diaz Ayala never re turned, though he now hopes to visit Cuba to help researchers
                 access his collection through the Internet.

                 For now, he finds his homeland in music. Opening the door to a room, he flicked
                 on the lights and said: "Here is Cuba ... Here is Benny More, Olga Guillot, Celia
                 Cruz and the famous Compay Segundo."

                 He also honors lesser-known musicians. A fan of Latin jazz, Diaz Ayala believes the
                 Dixieland of New Orleans drew on Havana's late 19th-century danzon orchestras,
                 which often would improvise.

                 His favorite song happens to be French, a waltz by Charles Trenet with lyrics
                 saying: "A long time after the poets have disappeared, their songs still flow in the
                 streets. The crowds sing them with distraction, not knowing the author's name."

                 "It's like a hymn for what I'm doing," Diaz Ayala said, "rescuing these composers
                 from oblivion."

                  Copyright 2002 The Associated Press.