A Catalog of Music

By Bob Krum, morning host on Classical 94.5 WNED

In honor of National Library Week (April 14-20) a few words from our former
music librarian turned Classical 94.5 WNED Morning Classics host Bob Krum.

The Peter Goldsmith Music Library (named after Peter Goldsmith, the first program director of Classical 94.5 WNED) as you might suspect, long been the centerpiece of the station.  In the early days, the library was comprised of thousands of LPs.  Eventually, in the ‘80s, CD’s became the predominant media.  For the last 4 ½ years, my role as librarian has been to perform the more mundane tasks of upkeep of over 32,000 CDs, making sure that all the CDs are ready to go for our program hosts and re-shelve them after they’ve been used.  The most fun part of the job is the selection of CDs to be added to our collection, which is one of the largest classical CD collections in the country.  Besides trying to make sure that we have new and exciting releases of the “favorites,” I like to look for recordings of works that might be considered undiscovered “gems.”  It might be a lesser known work by a popular composer, or it could be a symphony or concerto by a composer who is new to the station.  It’s fun to see if our listeners will enjoy these new works as much as I do.