How to Organize a 78 Collection

[MasterCylinder42]

Currently, my collection of 78s is sort of in disarray, scattered among numerous shelves and albums in no particular order. How would I go about organizing them? What systems do you use to organize yours? Any type of advice is appreciated

[edisonplayer]

I organize in alphabetical and numerical order.edisonplayer

[52089]

My 78s are grouped by era first - acoustic, early electric, later electric, then more-or-less by artist. For example, you'll find American Quartet recordings mixed in with my Billy Murray discs since he was a frequent member of that group. My 10" and 12" records are separate.

My Diamond Discs are in numerical order.

My cylinders are grouped by type - 2M wax, 4M wax, 4M BA, other - then grouped by number ranges. For example, I have a drawer marked "BA 1501-2000". The cylinders in that drawer are not in strict order.

[Lah Ca]

Interesting question. Thanks for asking. I have been thinking about asking the same. I am hoping you/we will get some helpful answers.

My 78s are in three places.

Ones I like to play often (and usually play on my stereo) are in a freestanding floor cabinet I built to purpose. They are in alphabetical order by artist. I have them in Disc-O-Phile sleeves, which all look the same. I made a mistake constructing the cabinet in that I did not put in dividers, in part because I could not find suitable good-2-side ¼" or thinner plywood. The shelves are too long, and I have too many records crammed in. It is very hard to find anything, especially as I get older and my eyes get worse. So I bought some cheap packages of coloured stick-on file-marker dots at a dollar store. I wrapped stickers around the edges of the sleeves. I started with green at the top of the sleeves for "A." And then moved on to red at the top of the sleeves for "B" and the on to yellow for "C", exhausting my selection of colours. I then dropped down the width of a dot for D, E, and F, repeating the sequence of colours. And so on and so on. Some groups of alphabet letters for which there are few or no artists I grouped together under a single colour and height position. This system makes finding things a little easier. It makes putting things away a lot easier. It is not perfect. The adhesive on the dots is not strong, and so they are easily removed without much/any damage to the sleeve should the sleeve need to be repurposed.

Ones that I like to play on my Aeolian Vocallian machine are in its storage cabinet. Mostly in albums. This works well enough, sort of.

Ones that I do not play often are in a horrid/chaotic jumble across a number of shelves in the room with A-V machine. They are mostly in Disc-O-Phile sleeve so they all look alike. Some are in albums which internally replicate/mirror the chaos of the shelves. This does not work at all. I have not started on my dot system with these shelves, yet.

I recently acquired two boxes of 78s, most of which are from the 1920s and early 1930s. For definite keepers from these disks I have started creating Avery labels to attach to the top right hand corner of the Disc-O-Phile sleeves. The labels contain a photo of the artist when one can be found, artist name, song titles, date of recording/release when such is known, and various discographical information of interest. This all is a process of no return as far as the sleeves are concerned. The labels do not come off. The labels, in conjunction with the dot stickers, make it very easy to find things, and they are of great interest to friends whom I may be playing disks for. My wife likes them a lot. The creation of the labels is a time consuming task, something I may never be finished with if I persist.

My son, who is an obsessive vinyl collector, can type 160 words a minute with complete accuracy. We once started a database catalogue of my 78s together. There was great enthusiasm initially, but this waned as he began to understand the enormity of the task and the novelty wore off.

Any magic wand solutions?

[alang]

This has been discussed many times before. If you search the forum for "organize records" you will get 8 pages full of results. Many good ideas have been shared but all involve the tedious task of actually doing it

I had my records sorted roughly by genre in my old house but when we moved there were many other priorities and so I now have many milk crates on shelves in my basement and would have to start over

Andreas

[MasterCylinder42]

Thank you all for the responses, they are all quite helpful!
I have a few days off this week, so I'll have plenty of time to get things all organized!

[mrrgstuff]

Currently, my collection of 78s is sort of in disarray, scattered among numerous shelves and albums in no particular order.

Mine too! . However I do know where stuff is because each section of shelf or box or other container I assign a letter to, and then catalogue on a spreadsheet which letter the record is to be found in. It's true I do have to look through a small bunch of records to find the one I want, but as its impossible to physically organise records so they are in date order, label order, music type order - all at the same time, I don't think its important to physically have them in any order.

I keep the list on a spreadsheet (backed up in the cloud) and just sort on whatever I am looking for at the moment

[AZ*]

Whichever technique you choose will help a lot. My records were haphazardly organized for many years to the point that I could not always find what I wanted to play. I am much happier now. In the process of organizing my records, I discovered records that I forgot I owned. I also discovered that I had occasionally purchased records that I already owned!

My system is fairly simple. Classical album sets are alphabetical by composer. Single records are usually grouped in albums with similar records. Bands and marches together, opera together, etc. I can usually find things now when I want to play them.

Good luck!

[Inigo]

I'm using a similar system for classical music records. But I'm resisting to do that with the popular stuff, because I like to take a bunch from the shelves that is mixed, to play one after another...

[AudioFeline]

My 78's need a lot of organising. My basic scheme is to have the discs grouped by genre - early jazz, later jazz, folk, Australian country, international country, blues, rock+roll, popular, novelty, classical, etc. The choosing of the categories evolved with the number disks I acquired in the categories, some don't have many disks. I've got a few binders and boxes of mult-disk sets, these live in close proximity to the shelved disks of the relevant category.

They are in alphabetical order by artist, and alphabetical by composer for classical.

My wife found a bookcase for me to put my 78's in, somewhat of a mistake because that created more space for me to acquire more disks! I have boxes of disks as well.

I created plastic dividers, cut from ring-binders and other sheet plastic I acquired. Other dividers are cut from firm thin cardboard. I've been wanting to find a local plastic supplier so I can buy enough sheets to cut nice dividers for the LPs and 78's. The dividers extend about an inch beyond the 78 sleeves, and I have a label taped with the genre and relevant alphabet letter.