When my friend the music critic told me that the best performances of Shostakovich’s B-flat minor and E-flat minor quartets (the 13th and 15th, respectively) were recorded by the Borodin Quartet in the U.S.S.R., I instantly went online to buy them. These two works rank among the most profound and moving lyrical compositions of our times. In his haste, however, my friend the music critic forgot to specify which recording by the Borodin Quartet I should buy.

There are, it turned out, two complete recordings of Shostakovich’s quartets by the Borodin Quartet. As I discovered while surfing, members of the “old” Borodin Quartet, who had worked closely with Shostakovich himself and who recorded the quartets in the late 1960s and early 1970s, did indeed produce a recording of the 13th Quartet, now in print from Chandos. But the old Borodin Quartet never got around to recording the 14th or the 15th. It was only in the early 1980s that a new incarnation of the Borodin Quartet recorded the 15th.

But here, too, there was a catch: That particular recording, published by EMI as well as by the Russian label Melodiya, was out of print and difficult to find. My friend the music critic was totally against purchasing the Emerson Quartet’s box set, even though it was the Emerson’s playing of the complete Shostakovich cycle a few years ago that revealed to so many New Yorkers what masterpieces both quartets were. My friend’s message to me was very simple. Get the Borodin – don’t bother with the Fitzwilliam Quartet or the Kronos Quartet recordings, either.

Armed with his opinionated recommendations, I embarked on some serious online sleuthing. Eventually I did manage to dig out the Melodiya box set on Amazon – but the price tag was simply prohibitive. I seem to remember that there was even a pirated edition (from China), but I decided against it. Shipping and handling charges, as I feared, turned out to be nearly as expensive as the CDs themselves.And besides, can one ever return things to China should one want to? I’d even have used Kazaa or Limewire – places on the Internet where people go to steal music – but the 13th and the 15th never once appeared on their listings.

Finally, I gave up and, going against my friend’s recommendation, resolved to settle for the 13th and the 15th as played by the Emerson Quartet. But even here another surprise awaited me. With the exception of the Eighth Quartet, you couldn’t get any of these quartets unless you bought the entire Deutsche Grammophon box set. I didn’t want the entire Deutsche Grammophon box set.

Last resort: the iTunes Music Store. Here I could have downloaded the Emerson Quartet’s version. The problem with Apple’s music store is that, despite all its iFriendly iClaims, it is a truly iNsidious and iMperial business enterprise: It will sell all six movements of the 15th (minus the “Elegy,” the first movement) at $.99 a movement – in fact, it will sell almost all the other performances of the 15 Shostakovich quartets broken up in $.99 mini iSegments. But the one quartet it will not sell (unless, once again, you download the whole box set for more than $49.95) is the 13th!

Why? Possibly because the 13th is the only quartet by Shostakovich that is one movement long. While a movement most often lasts from four to six minutes, or sometimes more, the 13th lasts an average of 19 minutes! Nineteen minutes of music for 99 cents would break Apple’s iBank and give the iStore away – hence the unavailability of my beloved 13th. Mind you, $.99 for a 55-second Goldberg Variation by Bach seems a shoddy deal for the hapless user, but it’s an iGoldmine for the Apple people. No wonder other music providers are having no difficulty underselling Apple’s music store. The problem is that the iPod can’t play most things you’ve purchased on line – unless you’ve purchased them through the iTunes Music Store. Clever.

But very, very, very iTacky.

Sleuthing, meanwhile, got me absolutely nowhere – until I realized that the answer had been staring at me in the face: the good old New York Public Library.

If you go to the Leo online database at nypl.org, a small miracle suddenly flashes on your screen. You can search for the recording of your choice and place a hold on it, the way I used to place holds on books in my college library.The NYPL will contact you either by mail or, better yet, by e-mail, once the item you’ve requested is available. And the miracle does not stop there: You can have the item shipped directly to the closest library branch near you, where it will wait for two weeks for you to pick it up. Once you’ve taken it out, you can return it to any other New York City Library branch.

And all this for iFree.

Within a matter of days of requesting the 13th and 15th, I had both in hand – and I realized that my friend the music critic is indeed a man whose opinion I will always swear by.

He recommended a particular recording of “Don Giovanni,” and NYPL was only too glad to prove him right. Don’t buy Angela Hewitt’s recording of the “Well-Tempered Clavier.” He was absolutely right there, too.As he was when he recommended Kenneth Gilbert’s recording of same on harpsichord, to say nothing of Helene Grimaud’s stunning Brahms capriccios, Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso, and everyone’s all-time favorite, the 1952 Furtwangler recording of “Tristan” with Suthaus and Flagstad.

For a few weeks, I had these in my possession. And all for free.

IPod – you got served!

Ebay and Amazon – eat your hearts out!

I will not even begin to mention the DVDs that can be put on hold and picked up at your local NYPL branch library as though you were receiving them from Netflix or picking them up from your local video store.

But the miracle doesn’t stop there. I am a great lover of recorded books, and was eager to listen to Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time.” I had written to Naxos, the company that produced a CD version of Proust’s entire masterpiece in Scott Moncrieff’s translation, and requested a copy for reviewing purposes. They never replied. So I decided to check with the NYPL. Sure enough, within a few days, I received an e-mail informing me that I could download and copy the spoken-word version of “Swann’s Way”without infringing copyright rules. I was ecstatic. I have put a hold on the recorded version of “Sodom and Gomorrah.” One day, I hope, the NYPL will be able to purchase and then let me hear the entire French version on CD. One day – soon, I hope – we will also be able to download the NYPL’s classical CD collection in the same exact way. Meanwhile, I’m thinking of taking out, one week at a time, a DVD version of Shakespeare’s complete plays as produced by Jonathan’s Miller. In 37 weeks, I hope to have seen them all. Well, 37 weeks may turn out to be a very tight schedule. Let’s say a year, then!

P.S. On Friday I received an e-mail from the NYPL reminding me that the complete Chandos box set of 13 quartets by Shostakovich as played by the original Borodin Quartet was waiting for me at the Morningside Branch on 113th Street and Broadway. I know what I’m doing this Saturday afternoon.

Thanks, NYPL.

Mr. Aciman teaches comparative literature at the City University Graduate Center. He is the author of the memoir “Out of Egypt” and of “False Papers.” His new novel will be published in 2007.