Before you plop down $15 to $20 on a CD, you may want to check and see if the library owns a copy, so you can hear whether you want to spend your hard-earned cash. The library has a collection of about 4,000 music CDs, and every month or two we order 20 to 30 new titles, budget permitting. With your library card, you can borrow up to 10 CDs. Except for our Holiday CDs, which circulate for one week only with no renewals allowed, our music CDs can be borrowed for 3 weeks, and may be renewed if they have not been requested by another patron.
Since joining the Music/Art/Media desk in February 2007, I've been having a lot of fun really getting to know our collection of music CDs. We have the most extensive collection of any public library that I've been to, with a wide variety of artists and styles. We have recently started weeding the collection of items which are in poor condition or have otherwise outlived their usefulness, in order to make room for new material, both purchased and donated, and cleaning up the CDs we've decided to keep.
In addition to the items we purchase, we also greatly appreciate donations, most of which we either add to the collection or save as replacements for items which become damaged or go missing. Over the summer we received a large gift of folk, country and world music CDs from a generous patron. And recently we've added some pop CDs, some heavy metal, and, of course, some new (to us) holiday music.
In selecting music, the resource we turn to most is allmusic.com, a comprehensive website with listings and reviews of artists, composers, and recordings in all genres. Periodicals like BBC Music Magazine, NME and CMJ are also good sources of information about new music. And of course, we always want to hear what you would like to see in our collection, because ideally your taste should be driving the direction of the collection.
While some libraries organize their collections by Dewey Decimal number, or by an intricate classification system called the ANSCR ("answer"), we use a system inherited from our collection of LP records (remember LPs? like CDs only big and black), combining a color code for genre with a Cutter number. A Cutter number is an alphanumerical formula representing a name or title, a letter or two followed by a number. Between the letter(s) and number is an imaginary decimal point, so the number is read left to right. It causes a certain amount of confusion, but the general feeling is that it would be too costly and labor-intensive to reclassify and relabel the entire collection, and that using two systems concurrently would be untenable.
Some of my favorites among the titles we've added in the past several months include:
Yiddishbbuk, contemporary chamber music with Klezmer, folk and synagogal influences by Argentinian Jewish composer Osvaldo Golijov.
Magic, the new album by Bruce Springsteen. A great pop record along the lines of Born to run and The river.
Voices, by Hall and Oates. The 1981 album is a great mix of punk, rock & roll, soul and new wave featuring four of their biggest hits including the best version ever of "You've lost that lovin' feelin'"
Get the Knack, by the Knack. Classic rock and roll. Parental discretion advised.
Crystals, by Sam Rivers. Avant-garde orchestral jazz.
The music of Elliott Carter, vol. 5: Nine Compositions. Short chamber works by (some say) the greatest living American composer.
Washington Square Serenade, another great album by outspoken singer/songwriter Steve Earle.
Translated by love, a flawless album by underrated country singer Kelly Willis.
Time on earth, the new album from Crowded House. Great comeback album from a great band.
Some suggest that CDs have become obsolete with the advent of MP3s, the iPod, and internet streaming. So come check out these quaint little dinosaurs while you still can.
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