Long Playing Records at the Main Library

The Library's Audio-Visual Center houses the Main Library’s collection of compact disc recordings. On Friday, January 11, 2008, the Audio-Visual Center will begin packing up its collections to move from its temporary home in the Steve Silver Beach Blanket Babylon Room back to a newly renovated space on the Library’s First Floor.

Before the Library began acquiring CDs in 1991, the Main Library collected audio on long playing records - referred to as Phonodiscs (or PDs) in the Library. The Library still maintains and circulates a collection of these 12 inch vinyl records in the Art, Music, and Recreation Center.

We have not added any items to this collection since 1989. Though the collection is gradually getting smaller as the records wear out, it still contains a variety of significant recordings.

Using the Advanced Search feature in our online catalog makes it is possible to limit your query to only LP records. These records are available for loan. We have no facilities to listen to phono discs at the library.

We circulate two important recorded series of American music that on vinyl that were issued at the time of America’s Bicentennial in 1976 - Folk Music in America and the Recorded Anthology of American Music.

The Folk Music in America series, published by the Library of Congress, consists of 15 volumes of folk music divided into subject categories like Religious Music, Songs of Love, Courtship and Marriage, Dance Music, Songs of Migration and Immigration, Songs of Labor and Livelihood, Songs of Humor and Hilarity, and Songs of Childhood.

The 100 volume Recorded Anthology of American Music was issued by New World Records. It consists of historical recordings of music in all styles and from all time periods of America’s first 200 years. Some notable titles are “Music of the Federal Era” (NW299), “Steppin’ on the Gas: Rags to Jazz 1913-1927” (NW269), “Songs of Earth, Water, Fire and Sky: Music of the American Indian” (NW246), and “Hand That Holds the Bread: Progress and Protest in the Gilded Age: Songs from the Civil War to the Columbian Exposition” (NW267).

Listeners interested in this series can consult the Index to the New World Recorded Anthology of American Music: A User's Guide to the Initial One Hundred Records.