You probably remember that brouhaha about the CD price-fixing antitrust case, where that judge was going to give everyone who'd ever bought a CD from 1995 to 2002 around $14.99 if they sent in their name and address, right? Well, as part of that same settlement, all the CD companies agreed to send free CDs to schools and public libraries across the land.

So hey -- our beloved San Francisco public library just got its Columbia Record Club shipment, and received: 91 copies of Ricky Martin's , 81 copies of Jessica Simpson's Irresistible, and 68 copies of Celine Dion's greatest hits. Yeah! We're reserving ours online right now!

Jaundiced athenaea-nauts are grumbling that the record companies appear to be dumping poorly-selling records on libraries (Irresistible, for instance, is the second Jessica Simpson album, the one that came out before Newlyweds), but cheerier librarians are storing their 106 copies of Lenny by Mr. Kravitz to give away as prizes for summer reading contests.

Check out what everyone else in California is getting. (For instance, San Francisco Unified (.pdf) is getting 51 copies of Whitney Houston's "Star Spangled Banner," 7 copies of "Carmen: A Hip Hop-era," 5 copies (clean) of The Wu Tang, and a smattering of Kronos Quartet and John Adams CDs, among many, many others).

Sound Loaded