Sami Klein <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Don Satz's mention of alphabeting his CD collection, and then Ed Zubrow
>asking the better way to do it, I can only tell you what I do and like,
>not that it is necessarily better.

My solution is similar to Sami's, but slightly more organized by ethnic
origin of composer.  Because my Russian, Nordic, British and American
collections quickly outstripped the capacity of the two 500-capacity units
I had, I reserved those for 'general' discs and had four separate areas
allocated one to each of the above collections.  Within each collection
I store alphabetically by composer name, then in order of type of
composition, along the lines of the Grove entries -- i.e.  opera, stage
works, symphonies, concerti etc.  It works relatively well and I rarely
have any difficulty finding a disc, despite the growing size of the
collection.

In order to keep track of what is on which disc when it comes to
multi-composer issues, I use fellow-Lister Tim Dickinson's excellent
ClassiCat32 software, available from him at www.tdware.com -- been using
it for over three years now and am very happy with it.  It also offers
me a facility to store other information about the composer and/or piece
which I gather from a variety of sources -- a truly valuable resource
when it comes to creative writing!

Tim Mahon
Alexandria, VA