Music

A Trip into the National Library of Sound Recordings

A place that seeks to preserve and catalogue every single sound recording ever made?  Yep.  That’s part of the Library of Congress in Culpeper, Virginia, where physical examples are stored.  Boing Boing reports what it’s like.

he Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation has a mouthful of a name, and sits in a seemingly peculiar spot, perched on a hill above the quaint small town of Culpeper, which is chock full of shops and mildly trendy restaurants.

Gene DeAnna, the chief of recorded sound collections for the entire library, explained during a visit in October that the building’s underground storage area had once belonged to the Federal Reserve, and stored enough currency to restart a cash economy east of the Mississippi River in the event of nuclear war or other massive disasters.

It became superannuated, and in 1988, the money was removed. The facility was put up for sale in 1997. David Woodley Packard, the son of HP founder Dave Packard and his wife Lucile, was instrumental in arranging for the private purchase of the site. The bunker was transformed through $155 million provided by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the Packard Humanities Institute, the latter of which the younger Packard heads.

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Alan Cross

is an internationally known broadcaster, interviewer, writer, consultant, blogger and speaker. In his 40+ years in the music business, Alan has interviewed the biggest names in rock, from David Bowie and U2 to Pearl Jam and the Foo Fighters. He’s also known as a musicologist and documentarian through programs like The Ongoing History of New Music.

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