After 5 Years and over 35,000 albums, CiTR has finished digitizing its CD archive. We’ve been working in reverse, which means we’ve just sent CD 00001, Beauty Pear’s 1995 S/T, into our digital music database. This is a historic moment in CiTR’s archival work, marking the station’s ongoing commitment to preserve Canadian and Vancouver music through its music library, and empowering programmers with the most accessible database possible.

CiTR kicked off this initiative with our 2010 Fundrive Fundraising Campaign, hoping to raise $30,000 towards a digital library and a digitization campaign for the releases already in our archive. The average lifespan of a CD is 25 years, and CiTR wanted to ensure its collection would be accessible for generations to come. This milestone comes just months after the launch of CiTR’s new website, and the complete digitization of Discorder’s archives in collaboration with UBC Library’s Digitization Centre!

Hear the first track off Beauty Pear, Fantastic Milk.

CiTR gives its thanks to the Digital Library Coordinators that have made this a possibility: Peter Doolan, Tristan Koster, and Andy Resto — and the volunteers along the way! Here’s to the next 35,000!