Canada: Record Collector Buys CBC Vancouver’s Vinyl Motherlode

From The Vancouver Sun:

Jamie Anstey has just purchased the mother of all Vancouver record collections – CBC Vancouver’s record library.
And that’s records, not com-pact discs. About 50,000, in fact: 37,913 LPs, 11,780 45s, 492 78s and 462 records that are listed as “miscellaneous.”
The collection had been built up since 1958, but was put up for sale when the CBC decided to centralize its music archives at a “virtual music library” in Toronto.
The purchase price was not disclosed, but is believed to be in the $10,000 range.
The library also included 31,000 CDs that the CBC is donating to two unnamed public institutions. The CBC tried to give away the records, but found no takers, so sold them.
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The irony is the really rare stuff is in the record collection, not the CDs.
“The LPs I felt had a lot more value,” said Ken MacMillan, who was the CBC’s music librarian for 32 years until his recent retirement.
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Anstey plans to comb through the collection for rare Canadiana, which he will add to the Canadian Music Archives, a library he’s started to preserve Canada’s musical legacy.

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Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, Libraries, News