In September of 2024, QC’s First Year Experience (FYE) program collaborated with the Music Library to host a listening party that showcased the Music Library’s extensive collection of vinyl records. The event with FYE marked the end of the first phase of an inventory and rehabilitation process that Music Librarian Alex Crowley had begun earlier that year, which also included the creation of an browsable table that facilitates easier engagement with the Music Library’s vinyl holdings. A workshop on turntable use followed in the Spring of 2025 as part of the Library’s Byte-Sized Workshop Series open to all members of the QC community. 

One of the Music Library’s Technics SL-1200 MK2 turntables and some albums picked by event participants

The success of these two campus events, and a heightened level of interest in vinyl records more broadly, led to a reprise of the FYE for the new academic year. On Wednesday September 15, students in the FYE program visited the Music Library after hours to gain a basic familiarity with the components of a turntable and learn how to use the three Technics SL-1200 MK2 turntables in the Music Library’s media center. Attendees were then invited to dig through a couple crates of representative selections from the library’s record collection, picking out Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 5 in F maj Op. 76 (Istvan Kertesz, London Symphony Orchestra), Two Centuries of Bengali Songs, and Wayne Shorter’s Speak No Evil, among others. Each turntable station features a headphone pre-amp with four jacks, so small groups can listen together simultaneously. 

As the event concluded, attendees retreated back upstairs for pizza where they were welcomed by the QC Vocal Ensemble, conducted by Dr. James John, practicing the final movement of composer Melissa Dunphy’s “American DREAMers: United We Dream” (2018) in the atrium of the Aaron Copland School of Music. And though the Music Library plans to host another turntable workshop in the Spring 2026 semester, that doesn’t mean you have to wait to listen to something from the record collection. All the info you need is on the Music Library Vinyl Collection Page. The Music Library staff is ready to assist.  

The Music Library is located in the Aaron Copland School of Music and is open Mon-Fri, 10am-4:45pm.