Radio Station’s Music Collection Brings Big Challenges to U. of Texas at Austin

Some of us remember the days when CD organizers were a thing. Whether you had CD towers in your living room or binders with plastic sleeves for the discs, it always seemed as if there never was enough space.

For most of us, those days are history—albums nowadays are easily stored in our computers, phones, or tablets. But the University of Texas at Austin is facing a CD-storage dilemma as big as the Texas prairie.

Thanks to its purchase of the entire physical library of the university’s public-radio station, KUT, the university’s Fine Arts Library has 60,000 CDs and 4,000 LPs to process and store—400 boxes’ worth. The archive comprises music of all genres, including albums by little-known bands that were at one time or another part of Austin’s long-thriving music scene....