Ottawa music critic leaves records to Carleton

The late music journalist Jacob Siskind's record collection has a new home at Ottawa's Carleton University.

Carleton's library will now care for the 20,000 plus vinyl records, 10,000 CDs and many more books, musical scores and recorded interviews that were in Siskind's collection.

"I've never seen that many LPs before in my life," Carleton's head of archives Patti Harper said as she packed up Siskind's music.

"We're so excited about it coming to Carleton. It's a great resource, not only for the Carleton community … but for the external Ottawa community and we're encouraging them to use it."

Siskind meticulously catalogued his collection, Harper said, which she expects will allow the university to make it available for research in the near future.

Siskind, who died last September at the age of 82, was a well-regarded critic who began his career with the Montreal Standard newspaper and was later entertainment editor of the Montreal Gazette. He left Montreal to work at the short-lived Ottawa Today, followed by the Ottawa Journal and later the Ottawa Citizen.

He spent 13 years as the music and dance critic at the Citizen until retiring in 1993. Siskind also participated in several radio programs on CBC, including Arts National, Great Keyboard Performances of the 20th Century and Musically Speaking.