I have been spending a fair amount of time at the library lately, working with a local activist who is doing his best to save public libraries from policies that threaten the integrity of the collections that intellectuals and researchers depend upon. One of the things that libraries are good for is music in the margins, especially field recordings of folk, blues, country, world music, and Native American rituals. Now I have found a blog that blends radio, music, art, culture, history, and more:
The Library Café is a weekly program of table talk with scholars, artists, publishers and librarians about books, ideas, and the formation and circulation of knowledge. It is hosted by Thomas Hill, and can be heard on WVKR FM 91.3 Tuesday afternoons between 12:00 Noon and 1:00 p.m. ET (15.00-16.00 GMT) during the academic year:
Listen Live | iPod feed | RSS feed
Many offerings from this blog containt archives of field recordings that would otherwise be unavailable. Here are a couple I recommend downloading:
Peace in a Time of War (27 November 2007) – A program of recordings from the Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries collection featuring music and poetry by Wolf Biermann, Hanns Eisler, Eric Bentley and Bertolt Brecht, as well as literature and statements read at a Read-in for Peace in Vietnam that took place at Town Hall in New York in 1966, featuring readings by Stanley Kauffman, Susan Sontag, Lenore Marshall, Arthur Miller, William Gibson, Jules Feiffer, and Walter Lowenfels.
Voices from the Dust Bowl (13 February 2007) – To continue our program from February 6 of subject matter related to the New Deal, we will be airing WPA field interviews from 1940-41 with Farm Security Administration migrant camp inhabitants, along with a re-creation of a camp cultural event, from WPA recordings in the Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Collection of the Library of Congress.
I am the creator and site administrator at The Basement Rug. I have been collecting LP's and CD's for more than 30 years. I 
