Message Board Archive: Thread Number 163

I know this sounds out of control but, I think I've gotten to the point
in my blues collection where database management is necessary. I was
hoping to never need to go there but the other day I went looking
through my old records are found a Blind Lemon Jefferson album that I
didn't even remember having owned.

In my current acoustic blues revival, I've got to be able to keep track
of what I have and don't have.

Have any of you folks gone through this? Do you keep track of what you
have with database managers?

If anyone does, can you give me some pointers on setting one up? What
fields are good to set up other than the obvious ones(artist, album,
label, medium)?

A long time ago, I'd given thought to doing this with songs so that as I
got hold of tab or lyric sheets, I could simply check the database to
see if I had a recording of the song and if so, where. As it is now, I'd
have to search quite a few albums to figure that out.

Loading that info would be a massive task. As I think about it now, that
task might be made somewhat easier with the advent of the Internet. One
can now go to places like CDNOW.com, call up the song list for a
particular album and then cut and paste rather than having to type in
each one. (There may be constraints in database software that make that
difficult though.)

Anyway, all of these theoretical possibilities need to be weighed
against the fact that they take time to do.

Any observations (other than that I'm getting out of control here)would
be most appreciated.

Thanks

Date: Tue, 9 Mar 1999 22:03:19 -0500 (EST)
From: Owner-HyperNews@ComCAT.COM (DocJohn)
Subject: Yea, I think you're out of control...
Message Number: 163.1

but That's ok. There was a time I knew every album I had, ever song on
each album and every artist and guest artist. Then I hit a point, like
you, where I maxed out.

My nephew, who is 13, is actually the king of database management. He
gets several magazines regarding airplane construction, different
airplanes, etc etfc. He is a fiend about it. He tears each interesting
article out, enters it in his database, punches holes and puts it into a
notebook with references and cross references. Someday he will use that
talent for something. I hope it isn't to manage his crack customers!
(just kidding)

Anyway, I've thought about the same thing. I suppose your fields would
have to include tuning, style (slide/delta/etc) backing musicians.
Whether you have tab and which notebook it's in (for example Big Bill
Broonzy did great work backing other cats) and I think you need to
reference author. Although many blues songs are hard to track author
wise, I find it interesting to track influences and versions of songs.
Kokomo Arnold does "the Dozens" someone else called a similar song The
dirty dozens and yet someone else did it and called it something
different. Do you need the year it was recorded? It depends on what your
eventual purpose is. If you were doing a radio show and wanted to be
able to reference work from certain years, yes. Otherwise, I don't know.

As far as entering fields, I use Dragon Dictate to dictate medical files
and love it. I can look at the file and read and not have to look up and
down. makes it easier to fill in forms too. Consider this when entering
a lot i=of info. I think you could also just do it when you listen. You
could take a year and plan on listenng to everything you have at some
point. And when you listen to it, enter it or put on the stack to be
entered next time you are on the puter.

good luck

John

Date: Thu, 11 Mar 1999 23:19:37 -0500 (EST)
From: hclewman@mindspring.com (Harry Lewman)
Subject: Idea: free form database
Message Number: 163.2

Have you ever tried a program called Day Timer Organizer.

It is a personal information manager. You can set up things like
directory structures, but its most endearing feature is that you can
search all the entries on any word.

I find that I am not organized enough, or know my habits well enough, to
set up a database, but using this program in a free form manner, i.e.
jotting down whatever seems important and making it a seperate entry
works well with this program. Once I have a number of entries, searching
for any word among those entries is very useful.