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Fond Tournant - Metal

The médiathèque has two types of collections: "on the shelf" and "in reserve". All materials (books, CDs, DVDs) are available to borrow, but the ones "in reserve" you have to request from the librarian who will then go in the reserve and bring you the material. This is a solution to keep the library shelves tidy and not overflowing, while still keeping all the materials.

The problem with this solution is that the materials "in reserve" are only visible on the online catalog - members cannot browse and stumble upon it. This means that "in reserve" materials generally circulate less.

In order to keep the "in reserve" materials visible and hopefully not forgotten, l'Espace musique et cinema organized a Fond Tournant - a shelf which houses one type of music from "in reserve" for a limited amount of time.

For February and March we organized metal music themed Fond Tournant! It seems that hard rock and metal didn't circulate a lot in the past so previous librarian moved all the CDs to the reserve. With my colleague Arthur, I went through the reserve and hand picked the CDs to put up. I would say around 70% of metal music collection from the reserve is now housed in this Fond Tournant.

I had a lot of fun working on this project. We have a solid collection of classic metal bands and albums, but we are definitely not up to date - we don't have any new metal music. Since this is not a popular style of music with our members, and our music budget is already small, it's unlikely that we will have major updates.

As I was going through the reserve, I was smiling - seeing all the classics, or some bands that I never expected to be in a public library collection (like Cathedral or Cannibal Corpse) - was inspirational and emotional. When I saw albums of Marilyn Manson, I started thinking about the past, when I just started listening to metal, and his music opened a new world for me. Or, when I saw Korpiklaani's first album Spirit of the Forest, I thought about a metal band that I had while in high school/beginning of college. And many others...

Working on this project was very inspirational, and I'll be listening to some classics that I never listened so far. For example, I never listened to the full Iron Maiden album. Or Motörhead. Or Metallica. I have a lot of catch up to do. :)

Anyway, I hope our members will enjoy and discover some new bands!