Undocumented cylinder BA23331 Sons of the Brave, Nat'l Mil B

[Valecnik]

I started cataloging my disc & cylinder collection into an excel spreadsheet, diamond discs & blue amberols first. It's a slow process but I've learned a lot so far. I've found a few cylinders dubbed from disc masters but never released on disc, including a couple Raderman's.

Most interestingly I found that BA 23331, British series, Sons of the Brave by the National Military band is not listed in Allen Sutton's discography or any other sources. The number is just skipped. Well it does exist! I'm guessing it's probably made from the same master as the wax amberol no 12425 by the same title, recorded in November 1911, but no way to confirm that.

So far 544 Edison discs & 240 Blue Amberol cylinders cataloged and a long way to go...

[HisMastersVoice]

I've been working on doing that since November. It's a long and tedious project, but so far I have all of my cylinders catalogued, and probably ¼ of my discs. It really pays off when you're looking for a record and you can refer to it. I plan on loading it on my iPad to take to record shows. No more wondering if you already have it or not. One quick search and you're done. I've found a lot of records I didn't know I had so far.

[gramophoneshane]

Most interestingly I found that BA 23331, British series, Sons of the Brave by the National Military band is not listed in Allen Sutton's discography or any other sources.

It is listed in the W.S. & R.K. Wimmer books, but apart from having the composer "(Bedgood)" after the title, no other information is provided.

[Valecnik]

I plan on loading it on my iPad to take to record shows. No more wondering if you already have it or not. One quick search and you're done. I've found a lot of records I didn't know I had so far.

Exactly. Last November I bought, at a pretty high price, "Silent Night" on BA in order to have a few to play at Christmas. Since starting to organize I've found two more, one with original box & correct top! I don't mind having duplicates of records I like but I'd like to consciously make the decision whether or not to buy, not just "buy it because I might not have it."!

What software are you using btw?

[HisMastersVoice]

What software are you using btw?

I experimented with several database programs, but I ended up just using excel. It's simple, but effective.

[Swing Band Heaven]

Be very careful if you use excel and try to sort the spreadsheet. You need to make sure you sort the whole thing and not just one column as you can inadvertantly end up jumbling your database and not realise until further down the line. Its an easy mistake to make.

[Valecnik]

What software are you using btw?

I experimented with several database programs, but I ended up just using excel. It's simple, but effective.

Me too. I even bought a special software for cataloging collectibles on eBAY. Threw it away and went back to excel.

Be very careful if you use excel and try to sort the spreadsheet. You need to make sure you sort the whole thing and not just one column as you can inadvertantly end up jumbling your database and not realise until further down the line. Its an easy mistake to make.

VERY practical warning SBH. Been there done that and had to start over once early on in the project. Making that mistake now would be a disaster.

[VintageTechnologies]

Be very careful if you use excel and try to sort the spreadsheet. You need to make sure you sort the whole thing and not just one column as you can inadvertantly end up jumbling your database and not realise until further down the line. Its an easy mistake to make.

Using a spreadsheet as a database is clumsy and also hazardous, as you pointed out. Nothing beats a true database program, if you know how to use one. Years ago I started slowly entering my Edison cylinders and disks into a DOS-based dBase III+ database. I later migrated that data to a Paradox for DOS 4.5 database. I have not found any Windows-based database that matches the features I like of that old program, so I will stick with it, no matter what. That old efficient software screams on a Pentium. I have several thousand records entered so far. Even a brute-force query without index files will scan the whole database in one second.

[gregbogantz]

I'm with you, Vintage. I used to write dBaseIII programs for DOS for a number of engineering projects I worked on. They were WAY faster and better than using a spreadsheet. Plus, they can be expanded easily to accommodate a LOT of data which is a limitation of some spreadsheets. But I haven't found anything as friendly to program (the dBase language was very much like BASIC) for Windows. I developed a phono record database with MacroShaft's "Access" a few years ago, but the programming language is complicated, busy, and inefficient compared with dBaseIII. Lots of boilerplate overhead baloney you have to deal with. You are forced to deal with all that GUI interface crap with everything you do, so you spend an inordinate amount of time just getting the displays and printout functions to work. I'm still using my Access program, but it's not really very friendly. I probly should resurrect my dBaseIII and run it on an old computer running DOS.

[alang]

While not as small and resource friendly as dBase III, there is still a version of dBase for Windows 7 that is being developed, which also is able to import old dBase apps. The dBase compatible Foxpro (Visual Foxpro 9) is no longer developed by Microsoft, but there are open source community driven updates that make it run under Windows 7 and even 64Bit. So there are still options to continue running dBase applications, but the license costs for either of these packages may make it cost prohibitive.

http://www.dbase.com/

Unfortunately nowadays everything has to be graphical and web enabled in order to find a market. Open Source meaning DYI by the interested community seems to be the only option for niche products like a phonograph records database. Maybe someone on the forum has the skills to create such a database application and work with input from everyone else here to make something usable for all of us who are looking for such a tool?
Andreas