Assessing 1537’s Edicts…

My most recent Sunday Pondering was a fun one – how I organize my collection! Inspired by THIS POST by Bruce, I shared how my collection currently stands (and it’s a wee bit of a mess). My post brought out some interesting comments, to say the least, so thanks everyone!

But it even got 1537 to create THIS POST in which he said, essentially, that his way is the only way…

“Omnipotence/Patience Sorely Tested,” indeed! 😉

I had great fun reading through that post, the language and style was all highly amusing. Fascinated, I decided to reply with my own decisions held against his edicts.

Let’s have a look at 1537’s ideas versus what I’ll end up doing… Will I agree with him?

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1537 Truth One: All LPs shall be filed in alphabetical order from left to right and THEN filed chronologically: in the event of a recording coming to light years later, Stones at The Marquee Club for example the LP is to be filed in the year it was recorded, NOT the year of release.

My Decision: I will do the A-Z left to right, mixing the (currently separated) categories (jazz, rap, classical, etc) back into one big pile. This makes sense because I realized that my computerized list of my collection doesn’t discriminate based on genre. It’s all one big happy pile in my list, so my physical collection ought to match that, just for consistency’s sake.

But I will not catalogue releases based on year of event. They will go in based on year of release. So, for example, the Stones Marquee won’t be at 1971, it’ll go at 2015.

I will keep my lovely wife’s CDs separate. If she ever went to get a CD of hers so she could play it in the car on her commute, and she couldn’t easily find her own CDs in my stuff, I’d hear about it. Easily avoided!

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1537 Truth Two: Solo artists will be filed by their first name.

My Decision: Nope. I will file by first letter of the solo artist’s last name, or by first letter of a band’s name. This is because I take my list with me when I shop, and record stores don’t have “Willie Dixon” in their blues section, it’ll always be “Dixon, Willie.” This is a choice for simple ease of use when, say, in Taranna.

In the case of classical releases, I will store by composer name, not conductor name. First off, the conductor is never more important than the composer. And secondly, if you have, say, Bach by more than one conductor, you’ll have to remember all the conductor names to find each one… I’d just rather have all the Bach in one place – under Ba for Bach, Johann Sebastian.

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1537 Truth Three: All Compilations and soundtracks will be filed under their name.

My Decision: Nope. They won’t go in the main pile. I will keep soundtracks and compilations separate, though they will still be alphabetized by title. I’ve always done it this way, and it makes sense to me, especially with compilations of various artists, that they be separate from single-artist releases.

Also, Star Wars will slot in by movie title, so it’ll go under S in the soundtracks section. Not under “Williams, John” (and especially not “John Williams” I’d never find it then).

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1537 Truth Four: …all bands/compilations using a number as their name will be filed in the alpha equivalent space.

My Decision: Nope. Bands with numbers for names go before “A.” I would never remember to look for 54-40 under “F.” Also, I don’t own very many bands with numbers for names, so having them all together makes sense to me, rather than digging through the whole collection to find one thing.

In Addition:

It may change, but I think I may still keep my Guided By Voices/related collection separate. There’s just so much of it, and it looks so collected and strong by itself. They deserve their own pedestal.

In Addition:

I will also be using this collection overhaul as an opportunity to do a wee bit of a (also long-overdue) cull.

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In Sum:

So it looks like it’ll all be A-Z, with minimal category exceptions: soundtracks, compilations, my lovely wife’s personal collection, and GBV/related. That seems simple enough.

1537’s edicts were a fun read, but they didn’t click completely with me. I agreed with a couple of them, but not the majority. And that’s OK. His collection is his, and he’s welcome to file it however he chooses. For me, I just know I wouldn’t remember where I’d put stuff if I tried to follow all of that. Thanks to 1537, though, for being so inspired as to write to us from on high in Vinylhalla.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Not my Man Cave, though I wish I had that much shelving and space…