Just back from warm and winning San Francisco where ARC helped launch the prototype of a Listening Room through the largess of the Internet Archive (IA). Tucked behind the columns of their majestic building, turn left, have a seat, hoist an iPad, don some earphones and swipe your way through more than one million albums!

Don’t those kids look comfy? That’s the whole idea, to offer a comfortable environment for listing to more music than you can get anywhere else. Free. Just the thing a library was meant to do. Down the line ARC will open a Listening Room here in New York. or Melbourne? Hong Kong maybe? We’re thinking Branch Libraries.

For now the place to go is San Fran. All this came about through the generous help of the IA. They set up digitizing station here in NYC and this summer a passel of dedicated interns turned discs into lossless bits. Just as importantly we scanned all the liner notes, booklets and info associated with each recording. Right now it’s just the audio and record cover images on the Pad, but expect detailed metadata to follow along with links to purchase.

ARC is one of many entities involved in the IA’s larger initiative, Building Libraries Together. Read all about it on their blog. The NY Times thought it was a good idea also, giving ARC a teeny, tiny plug.

Thanks to Brewster and Mary and June and Wendy and Michelle and all the other great folks at the IA who made the party and the visit so very pleasant.