Sound Recordings: Dallas Central Library is Selling Part of Its 38,000-Piece Record Collection”

From the Dallas Observer:

When Heather Lowe came to Dallas a little over a year ago to work at the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library, she realized she was sitting on a gold mine. While the Dallas Public Library system had taken on a series of budget cuts over the years, one thing had remained intact: an enormous collection of vinyl records. The only problem? Few people know it exists. So Lowe decided to try and change that.
Later this month, the Central Library — which was built in 1982 and celebrates its 33rd birthday this year — is throwing a combination party and record sale, dubbed the 33 1/3 party, to help spread the word about its unique record collection. “We have a few regular patrons who check out LPs. It’s a closed collection so you have to ask a librarian to go get them for you,” explains Lowe, who’s the library’s manager of the fine arts division. “LPs are more popular nowadays, so we wanted to find ways to get them used more.”
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She estimates somewhere between 3,000 and 6,000 records will be for sale, all priced at $2 apiece. “A good portion of our collection is classical, as you might expect from a library. There’s a good-sized jazz collection and a decent pop collection,” Lowe says. As a punk rock fan, she does make one admission: “There’s not much punk rock, unfortunately.”

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