France's biggest record collection (probably).

Radio France is an institution. It's the counterpart of the British Broadcoasting Corporation, only maybe less influential worldwide. 

In France, we like archiving. Well, we love it. For instance, for each book or magazine printed in France or imported into the country, two copies must be archived at the National Library ; that's what we call the "dépôt légal" (or legal deposit, in a tentative translation). Although such an obligation also exists for recordings, I'm not sure it's really implemented, except maybe by major companies and big labels, which face 75000 € fines if they don't comply. It seems to only apply to physical recordings, leaving a huge part of musical creation out of the radar, without even mentioning that the internet makes notions like "national territory" and "importation" totally irrelevant. 

However, though the BNF (National Library) record collection must be the biggest in France and one of the biggest in the world with over a million references, it must be really difficult to access. At least they don't advertise about it. 

Radio France does. They recently let the media know about the 450 000 vinyls sitting in a Parisian warehouse. The collection grew so big that it could no more be housed inside the Maison de la Radio and had to move to a new location. 

Overall, what makes this collection unique is that these records are scrupulously documented ; what's not said in the liner notes is known anyway : session musicians, uncredited producers or designers, etc., every actor of the making of a record is searched. This must be a monumental workload, but how interesting ! I let you imagine the value of such a collection, considering most of these recordings are original issues. 

In addition to that, 700 CD's (a sign of the time) are acquired every month. 

In order to make this huge collection live (most of the records are sitting still, almost dying there), Radio France recently started inviting an artist, on a monthly basis, to review his own career and pick records to broadcast. Here's an example with jazz legend (and fluent French speaker) Archie Shepp. Don't miss the video of the show, in which you can see this giant literally walking inside the Radio France record collection.  

For now, this collection is not open to the public (even though it's supposed to be a public service), for obvious reasons, but the director says he's thinking of something to make it accessible. Still, it's good to keep dreams alive...