As a result of a federal lawsuit in February, the State of Ohio joined 42 other states in alleging that recording companies collaborated in an attempt to fix CD prices. The recording companies settled out of court in a two-phase agreement. According to a Dispatch article on June 23, 2004, the first phase distributed about 3.5 million checks fo $13.86 to individuals who had purchased a CD between 1995 and 2000. The second phase resulted in the distribution of 165,528 free CD's to Ohio public libraries, schools, and universities. As a private college, we did not qualify.
However, when the CD's arrived, libraries complained of multiple copies (up to 59 of the same recording!) and recordings that had no place in their collections. There are apparently no restrictions on what was to be done with the CD's, so several university libraries made lists of the CD's that they did not add to their own collections and offered the extra copies to the first takers. As a result, we have received 77 CD's from OSU and 9 more from BG. We will be keeping all but 12 of them. Most are classical and jazz recordings.
