John Peel's Digitized Record Collection to Provide Teenage Kicks Through the Web February 24, 2012, 12:55 pm The British D.J. John Peel's mission to share his favorite music with the world is one that will continue even after his death: his record collection, which includes more than 25,000 LPs and 40,000 singles, is being digitized for an Internet project that will go online in May, BBC News reported. Mr. Peel, who died in 2004, influenced pop-musical tastes and trends for the nearly 40 years that he hosted programs on BBC's Radio 1, turning listeners onto bands like the Smiths, Nirvana and the Pixies (and playing "Teenage Kicks" by the Undertones countless times along the way). The John Peel Center for Creative Arts in Stowmarket, England, said that it will make available many of the albums from Mr. Peel's personal collection on a Web site called The Space. There, users will be able listen to the music (copyright issues permitting) and read Mr. Peel's personal notes on these albums, and watch interviews with musicians and members of the D.J."s family; some of his "Peel Sessions," recorded live by various artists in his BBC studios, will also be made available. Tom Barker, the director of the John Peel Center, told BBC News: "What we're hoping to do is create an online interactive museum which answers the question "What is in John Peel's record collection?" but also provides the audience with a visualization of it. We hope that giving them access to a particular band or their first album or listening to his show will inspire people to tell us their stories. The center said that it hopes to post about 100 albums each week beginning in May, and 2,500 in total during the course of the project, which runs until October. Sheila Ravenscroft, Mr. Peel's widow, told BBC News, "We're very happy that we've finally found a way to make John's amazing collection available to his fans, as he would have wanted."