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Tis the season, just like the header says! Yesterday (December 11, 2025), I visited the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library in downtown Buffalo in order to donate 13 sealed LPs to their Spin It Forward campaign. It promotes the idea of making new LPs available to the library’s patrons to listen to on either one of the donated Audio-Technica turntables located right there in the library (as seen below, at one of the two designated listening stations) — via listening sessions done using headphones only, of course! — or check them out for a brief time to take home and listen to on their own tables. (That was something I did myself back in my early high school days, so seeing their LP offerings brought back some good playback memories.)

I first wrote about this admirable program here on AP four months ago to the day on August 12, 2025, and knew instantly that I had to get involved personally. Sometimes I receive multiple copies of LPs I’m covering/reviewing, and sometimes I find myself buying a second (and even a third!) copy of something I haven’t yet catalogued properly in my own collection. (Note to self on the latter point: Update that bleepin’ list more regularly, wouldja??) While I do admit to buying backup copies of certain pressings of certain favorite LPs, there are those I consider to be #smh purchases that I don’t need to keep.

Learning about the Spin It Forward program over this past summer gave me the idea to put aside any of the aforementioned #smh doubles I had in hand, instead returning/exchanging them. When I had enough of those LPs to fill up my trusty Amoeba Music shoulder bag, I knew it was time to donate them in person — and that time was yesterday, during the prime holiday giving season. As you can see both above and below, the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library also has row after row after row of used and well-loved LPs in their listening library, all expertly catalogued for them to access for anyone who wants to check out classic LPs from pretty much any genre you can imagine. (Brief sidenote: I was able to identify Dave Mason’s July 1970 LP Alone Together and INXS’ October 1987 LP Kick just from the partial views of their back covers in the photo below — bonus points to those of you who can ID any other LPs in this photo without zooming in on their spines!)

During my visit, Buffalo & Erie County Public Library Special Collections Manager Susan Buttaccio and Music Collections Supervisor Adam Rubin took me “on tour,” right on down into the underground catacombs where the balance of the library’s vinyl offerings reside (in addition to stopping briefly at the “2 Block View” nexus point, where row upon row of shelved books and bound editions stretched in both directions as far as the eye could see, one city block apiece). Besides the shelves full of LPs seen in some of the photos I’ve provided here, they also have an amazing, well-kept collection of 78s donated by a patron as meticulously fastidious at cataloguing and keeping them in pristine condition as some of us are with our own wax, in addition to cabinets full of sheet music that dates back to the early 20th century. (One late-century example is shown below.)

I will do a longer followup piece to my original Spin It Forward story sometime in the new year after my next onsite library visit, but my main purpose yesterday was to donate that baker’s dozen’s worth of LPs to the program in the spirit of the holiday season. My humble suggestion to you: See if your own local library has a similar program — or look into ways you could help start one there yourself — because it’s totally worth it to share music on vinyl with those who don’t have the level of means and access to it that we have.

Before I sign off, I’d also like to thank Buffalo & Erie County Public Library stalwarts Sean Piazza and Melissa Burgess (and their recent hire, Kuniko!) for their own, invaluable behind-the-scenes help during this entire process. Viva la library vinyl!