Vinyl Junkie Extraordinaire

In my basement I have around 250 vinyl LPs (and a couple dozen 12" singles) in storage, representing the focus of a good deal of my leisure time from the mid-1970s through the late 1980s (I got my first CD player in '87, but I kept buying vinyl for a while after that). Unlike a lot of other people, I didn't sell or discard my records after switching to CDs. One friend's husband is an extremely avid collector, and he owns several thousand LPs, which take up quite a bit of space in their home.

But the king of vinyl has to be Bob George, the co-founder of a recorded music archive that is profiled today in a story on the New York Times City Room blog. Mr. George's archive contains more than two million recordings from 1950 to the present. His efforts have led to a partnership with Columbia University (coincidentally the alma mater of the Mrs.' father) that opens the archive to research and classroom use.

Those of you who are into collecting music, regardless of format, will likely appreciate this story and Mr. George's dedication to preserving a piece of cultural history. The story also has a sidebar featuring some of the archive's music.