A Quick Tour of The WBJC Library
Welcome to a quick tour of the WBJC Library which consists of approximately 33,000 thousand CDs. That impressive figure doesn’t include what is around 10,000 CDs that need to be auditioned and then entered into the WBJC Librarian database. Like washing dishes, bathing, or eating, vetting and entering recordings is an ongoing, necessary task that can also be fun and exciting. It’s always great to receive new recordings featuring a favorite musician like Hilary Hahn, Manuel Barrueco, or Yo-Yo Ma. The recordings in the library are catalogued alphabetically and numerically. For instance, London 448-134 is followed by 448-155, and so forth. By the way, what are the white arrows pointing to? They are pointing to the black sharpie marks on the top of each CD spine. After a CD is entered into the Librarian database, the title is then entered for ASCAP reporting purposes. The black mark indicates that the title of the CD has been entered.
The A to C CD shelves begin with the label Abbey ending with Cleveland Institute of Music.
On the other side are the Shelves lettered C to K or Clarinet Classics to Koch. Fun fact, since CBS and Sony are related as CBS/Sony, radio stations have had to decide whether to file the label under C for CBS or S for Sony. At the two previous stations where I worked, CBS/Sony was located in the S section, but at WBJC, we file it under C.
And just behind the C to K shelves are the K through R or Koch to Radio Netherlands shelves.
And we wind up in the R through Z shelves, Radio Netherlands to Zoho. The lower arrow points to a partially empty shelf which is valuable space to make room for new recordings. There is one thing we don’t have a lot of, and that is space!
The shelves below contain recordings to be catalogued plus band, organ, and movie music. The opera section begins here too!
The Shelf opposite contains choral and vocal music.
These shelves are dedicated to the remaining operas in the collection. Unlike the rest of the library, the opera section is filed alphabetically by composer not recording label. The empty shelf is valuable space for the recordings we will be adding eventually.
There are thousands of CDs that need to be catalogued including a generous donation from the estate of David Donovan who was a bassoonist, H. L. Mencken scholar, Face The Music panelist, and a devoted lover of classical music.
Abhinn Malhotra and Jonathan Palevsky will never agree on Hockey, but all of us at WBJC are delighted with Abhinn’s team spirit and sense of organization which makes him a great librarian! Abhinn has made great progress in cataloguing the library. Below is Abhinn’s desk with the CDs he’s cataloguing and the team he’s rooting for. 🙂
And for those of us under 5ft…
