Arts & Culture

Have you camped out overnight before Record Store Day? Are the words "diggin' in the crates" and "dusty fingers" part of your personal manifesto? When you close your eyes do you see spinning black circles? If any of these are the case, then you're probably a record fanatic.

Well, I am too, and on Monday, Oct. 16, the Arts department of the Toronto Reference Library is hosting a record swap; whether you've been collecting wax since the dawn of the LP or are new to the record game, we hope you'll join us up on the fifth floor to trade an album or two with other fans (sorry, I won't be swapping records from the library's collection!), or just chat about the latest happenings in the vinyl revival.

And while you're here, check out a sample of the library's collection of over 15,000 records, as well as other areas of our music department including concert posters, band photos, books and scores.

Since we're already talking vinyl, did you know the library has a Discogs.com account you can use to virtually dig through about 2,700 (to date) of the records in our crates? We've got vinyl from A ("A" Ukuleles of Halifax) to Z (Zakarpatsky Chorus and Orchestra), or as M.I.A. put it in her song "Paper Planes," "more records than the KGB." You can also check out some of our records on Instagram by searching the hashtag #tplvinyl, or read some of the stories about our collection that have been in the news:

• The rarest records in the Toronto Reference Library's colossal vinyl collection (Toronto Life)
• Library opens vinyl collection to public (NOW Magazine)
• Toronto Reference Library gets in on vinyl craze, buys 100 records (Toronto Star)
• The Toronto Reference Library now carries vinyl records (Exclaim!)
• Toronto Public Library gets in on the rebirth of records (CBC)
• Toronto Public Library adds 100 new vinyl records to their collection (Indie88)
• New Records at Toronto Reference Library (TPL blog post)

We've also been posting some of the gems of our record collection on the Reddit.com r/vinyl board; check out all of our posts here.

Toronto Reference Library Record Swap

Mon Oct 16, 2017