About this time last year I turned my attention to the weighty subject of
the home record/tape crunch. I didn't call it by that name, but you'll remember.
You've been collecting. And playing via the hunt-and-peck system. And you've got so many records by now that you can't find what you want to play. Something has to be done. That means a home library.
After my preliminary ideas last year, I received a passel of suggestions from you readers, just as many as there were opinions on how to solve the early gas crunch last June. All different! But interesting. Fortunately, we in hi-fi do not have to settle on one system for our discs and tapes--our home is our record/tape castle and we can do what we wish, just so it works out for us. I do have more ideas, but I'll pass on some reader thoughts, from those who ought to know because they have practiced what they preach, each via his own collection.
So you, too, still hunt and peck? Chicken, I say. Take this man. Here's a guy who is still not far from the beginning, only a couple of years. But he says that already his private collection has got to the point where he has been "forced to organize it." Good stuff. That's the right approach. He says that now it is "certainly easier to locate a specific record from the file than to dig for hours to find one I want." Well, decidedly, I agree. But how can he manage to "dig for hours" through a library of just 41 records? The man is 17 years old and should peck and hunt better than that. P.S. He forgot to tell me HOW he organized his 41 records. So I will not name him.
A gent named Richard A. Singleton, of 606 West Third St., Ayden, N.C., takes a different tack. One day I received a big, fat, heavy package, insured, which turned out to be a bulky three-ring loose-leaf binder all printed up, my name on the front, and a huge number of blank printed index pages inside, plus packages of press-on letters, large size, separate large index sheets--and on and on. It is called Stereodex Masterlogue and, shall I say, it is slightly commercial.
When I did not respond quickly (well, after a few months ...), I got an urgent follow-up letter and then later came a heavy recommendation from a friend of Mr. Singleton. OK, good sales technique. This big book is not for me (with many thousands of records!) but it could be for you, especially if you like neat printing and everything very meticulous. A lot of people do. Suffice it to say that this system puts all your info in loose-leaf form on sheets that are excellent for a big pop collection, though I would say not so useful for classical. Not enough room, only one typed line per item. Cross references, and so on. If interested, make use of address above.
I knew there was bound to be word from a computer man. Matter of fact, I know two already and you probably know more, who catalogue via their machines. Trouble is, you have to have Access. My Colorado friend, who put me onto the Audio Pulse when it was brand-new (he had just bought one), did his library via his large lab computer 'way back, and he showed me his printouts. Now Richard Ritari of Moor head, Minnesota, sends me a sample of his. Phew, what a lot of paper! Bulky and very wasteful of space, but good.
The Quicker Record Sorter
The computer idea (given access) is simple enough. No cards, no sheets.
You just feed all your items into the computer's capacious memory as they come in. Then you program your ma chine to "search" (is that the word?) for your stuff in terms of any category you may dream up-say all the recordings you own that include left-handed violinists or oboi di caccie. (What? Bzzz-bzzz-bzzz ERROR.) Or handy things like composers, artists, forms, Richard Rodgers musicals, brass quintets, symphonies, any old thing that interests you. Just a matter of computer time and your time. The computer can do. Can you? To be sure, there are a few impracticalities for most of us. Nevertheless, the basic idea of computer data filing is getting around fast these days, and I'm all for it, at least in principle. Mr. Ritari's Basic Program prints out on a long fat roll of 10-in. paper, ordering his collection as of a stated day. The items he sent me are listed alphabetically by title and artist or group, all pop, and also by number. Starting with 1, there's Aerosmith, and about a yard further down we come to 37, Dueling Banjos. The whole thing must be at least 25 feet long. New items, of course, are inserted in the machine's memory for future printouts, and this would seem to require a re-numbering each time-just why the numbers are used I cannot tell you. Maybe the computer can't help it.
Doesn't sound to me as if this particular catalogue has yet explored the big computer's ultimate capabilities.
Ritari says he gets printouts "not only of the artist and the title of the recording but also the label...and the mode I have it in." Good. But one could do a lot more, given computer time. For a really comprehensive system you could have dozens of orderings, and all with the greatest of ease! On regular cards, each would mean an entire set of file cards ordered into a separate file drawer, a lifetime of hard work as I well know. (I have only two orderings on my cards, which take dozens of boxes and never get completed.) Of course, all this may sound silly but the idea, I repeat, is very sound. It's coming along everywhere, in manufacturing, business, research, and always for the same reason, high-speed access.
Why not for us, too, since that is exactly what we need? I suspect that even now the small office or personal computer with adequate memory is amenable to some sort of private catalogue system for home record collections--and with less use of paper! Maybe even on the littlest printout portables? Could be. If you collect and also compute, keep in mind.
Curious how slavish a computer can be. It reads its programmer's mind, not its own. The Ritari printout lists only record labels, no catalogue numbers.
COLUMBIA RECORDS. All my catalog instincts (as a reviewer) say that the least the computer could do, with so much waste paper space, would be to say, maybe, COLUMBIA MS 6778 STEREO. Matter of choice, Ritari's own. But that computer has its claws into him, even so. HE TYPES HIS CORRESPONDENCE ALL IN CAPS no lower case, who needs lower case computers can't read it.
Computers Can't Spell?
One minor fault here. People today act as though we didn't have to spell anymore, like adding and subtracting.
Let the machine do it. But we do, even for computers. EXCELLANT, typed Mr. Ritari, concerning my two articles on record library systems. Compliment accepted but not spelling. Next thing, his computer will be printing out data on the BEETLES, or those immanent classical composers HAYDEN and MENDELLSON, to quote some common misspellings. I received a letter from another correspondent who says he catalogues his records by sorting them into piles, putting the lardger piles on the left, and sow on and so fourth. I'd say his record/tape crunch is going to get crunchier before it gets better.
My final correspondent is also a computer programmer, Charles D. Edmondson of Bowie, Maryland. But surprisingly, his long and well-expressed letter does not even touch on the idea of a catalogue via computer. He is a trained librarian, and this explains it.
He recommends--I knew someone would-not a computer but the Library of Congress catalog (note spelling) for your home use.
As a librarian, he probably should.
The librarian mind, without bias either way, has to be recognized as special, whether amateur or pro. A lot of hi-fi people have it. Most don't. Matter of temperament. The Library of Congress, for all who do, is the top governmental authority on library matters and the ultimate repository (not counting the Smithsonian) of practically everything that can be catalogued, however vast the numbers. I suppose our lesser libraries do have a choice, but the L. of C. is by far the biggest voice in this profession, and it is listened to. By everybody with a librarian cast of mind, that is.
The Ultimate Catalog By me too. But with distress. As a non-librarian, indeed, one who avoids library science whenever possible (and then invents his own systems when absolutely forced to the wall!) I tend to cringe. Sorry, Edmondson! No offense intended. But bigness in libraries, as in other very large agencies, of ten means you-know-what. The obstinately bad thoroughly mixed with the imperishably excellent.
For every recording ever issued here, at least since 1953, there is an official Library card available, and there are enormous volumes of reduced size replicas, periodically reissued and updated. The Library sets up standards for all this carding and for the data included, even to spelling and names
- they go so far as to set down an official title for musical works that vary, like Fifth Symphony and Symphony No. 5. All this is done with al most fanatical thoroughness, the cards are filled up with quantities of sub-references and helpful symbols. And the whole mass of information spreads out incessantly to just about every other library anywhere. Admirable--but is it for you, in your tiny cubicle of a home with your thimbleful of recordings? Not only records but, of course, books by the millions. And musical scores. Billions of cards in the whole, and fortunately the cards for music have been separated out and are published in a special edition, "Music and Phonorecords." All this I am borrowing from Mr. Edmondson's lucid ac count of the L. of C. operation, though I do seem to have heard about some of it before, as you might suppose. Any how, that still makes for music cards in the multi-thousands if not millions.
Every single published item. Fantastic--but....
Small Type Blues
(Loud squawk from me.) MUSIC and Phonorecords? Wouldn't you know, they have put all the musical scores right in there with the recordings, one big mix. That's fine for a music librarian, but for the hi-fi man it is a mess! Score after score, by a thousand unrecorded composers and as many who are recorded, and it is NOT easy at quick glance to untangle the score cards from the "phonorecord" cards.
Visually the cards are a clutter and a pain and maybe they have to be, what with so much info on them. Five minutes with the sample page Mr. Edmondson sent me, three tight columns of reduced-size card info, and my eyes began to cross. Such a sprawlingly unaesthetic, repetitive mass of up small type! Sorry, librarians, but ugh. Really. (Speaking from OUR viewpoint, of course.) Mendelssohn-Bartoldy, Felix, 1809 1847 is printed out no less than 18 times on this one page of cards--which is undoubtedly a necessity since each is separate physically in the actual card form. BUT . . . If I'm to have cards for my minuscule collection of thousands of records, I want the essential locating info and no more!--just MENDELSSOHN would do me fine and forget all the other eye-straining small type. Not even, for instance--Mr. Edmondson evidently missed this-- a tiny line far down on two of the cards which says "Program notes by Edward Tatnall Canby on the slipcase." If you can read it. (I suspect that I am thus small-typed on a couple of hundred other Library cards, but do YOU need the interesting info? Go read me on the record itself.) Just a bit further. The music catalog of the L. of C. is put out in huge cumulations, as they are called, big volumes of pages like the one I have been describing, each with around three dozen cards reduced on it. These cumulations cover five years, each superseding the last, and they go for $30 a volume and come in more than one volume at that. Mr. Edmondson has them all on his shelves and is expecting the latest soon. With these you have everything. You can find them in many local libraries, to be delved into. He suggests that what you do is to "create" your own cards from these, guided by the Library's information and system, omitting what you don't need. Yeah. I figure that will take you around seven years, with good luck, and not counting travel time. Go right ahead. But that isn't all. How about filing your cards--and your records? Well, the suggestion, in all good faith, is this, and it is what Mr. Edmondson has done with his own collection. You use a "very fine" system called ANSCR, the Alpha-Numerical System for the Classification of Recordings. You buy a guide to it. (Still want to go ahead?) This system has 23 major categories for recorded items (largely classical, I seem to note) and many sub-categories, so you know where to put everything. Each category is identified by a letter of the alphabet.
Whoa. Right here, Edmondson and I part company, I trust with a handshake. Sometimes the librarian mind is baffling. Remember my Own categories, a shorthand whereby you can easily read a code that looks like the proper spelling? Sym for Symphony, Son for Sonata, vl C for Violin Concerto? Well, guess what ANSCR does with virtually the same categories.
Opera? Opera is represented by the letter B. Orchestra is filed under E. And for all I know, Sonata is Q and Quartet is S. Now how is that for logic? Go right ahead, but after your seven years' labor you will be a slave to your B-for-Opera and E-for-Orchestra cards.-
You'll have to memorize the whole new alphabet before you can find a thing. Sensible? No, I do not like the Library of Congress scheme though the info on its cards can be very useful in moderation for those of us who have record/tape crunch problems. If you really want to get into sophisticated data storage, then DO IT BY COMPUTER, to your own choice! That's the sine-wave of the future.
Mr. Edmondson's letter was a civilized and helpful account, even so, and I trust he will forgive my strong opinions. I quote him, to end, with a very well-put observation--"The power of a catalog is in its ability to allow one thing to be in several places at the same time." Ever so true, and you will note that this is precisely what computer data storage is all about.
How about it, Mr. E.? You're a computer man yourself. And also, how about it, you small computer designers?
(Adapted from: Audio magazine, Oct. 1979; Edward Tatnall Canby )
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