DONATION ADDS VOLUME TO LIBRARY COLLECTIONS.

Byline: Matt Cooper The Register-Guard

Anyone who says don't look a gift horse in the mouth hasn't received 1,355 copies of Whitney Houston singing "The Star-Spangled Banner."

One Washington state educational service district had that dilemma recently after music retailers donated 115,000 compact discs to the state in a settlement of allegations that the industry had priced CDs too high.

But Oregon won't have the same problem because librarians here got the chance to say what they can use, said Kevin Neely, spokesman for state Attorney General Hardy Myers.

Last year's settlement required defendants Capitol Records, Time Warner, Atlantic Recording, Universal, Sony and others to pay $67 million and donate more than $75 million in CDs across the country.

About 40,000 Oregonians received checks for $13.86. And this week, more than 67,000 CDs - valued at $900,000 - were shipped to 300 Oregon libraries and public schools.

In some of the 40 or so states that received CDs in recent months, libraries got CDs that didn't meet needs or were "absolutely not the kind of music they were interested in," Neely said.

Schools in Washington's King and Pierce counties, for example, received 387 CDs with explicit lyrics by the late Puerto Rican rapper, Big Punisher, according to news accounts.

The Eugene Public Library, by contrast, is waiting eagerly for less punishing names such as Frank Sinatra and John Coltrane to add to its 10,000-plus collection, public services manager Rob Everett said.

The library requested certain genres, and Everett expects an eclectic mix of 2,800 CDs in classical, rock, jazz and pop music, valued at $39,000 and due next week.

"It's going to be a definite plus to our collection," he said.

To reduce duplicate CDs and ensure a fair distribution, the attorney general's office spent weeks developing an allocation and exchange plan with state librarian Jim Scheppke.

Not everyone is getting CDs - the Junction City Public Library, for example, doesn't have room for music CDs - and Scheppke noted that, regardless of the new CDs, many libraries already have considerable collections.

Some libraries are in the dark as to what they'll receive: Linda Weight of the Siuslaw Public Library District in western Lane County asked for bluegrass, blues and American folk to supplement its 3,000 CDs.

"We'll see what we get," she said.

At the Springfield Public Library, director Bob Russell is expecting big names such as Jefferson Airplane, Johnny Cash and Wynton Marsalis to nearly double the current collection of 1,040 CDs. The new 1,000 titles in country, rock, jazz and more are valued at $14,000.

"There's been a lot of negative publicity, and we won't be able to use everything, but it's going to be some pretty good additions," Russell said. "The price is right."