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It's summer and that means working on projects that I don't have time for during the school year.

I would like to organize and catalogue my entire piano repertoire on my computer so I can look up books/sheet music easily and keep track of what I have and what needs replenishing. It would sort of resemble a database that one might find at a music store. Does anyone do this?

You're kidding, of course!

Seriously, great idea, but I'm sure it's going to eat up a lot of free time.

I did it about 15 years ago. It did, as John points out, take quite a bit of time, but it worked quite well. Take some time to work out how you will file various things. If you have collections, will you have an entry for each piece? Will you have a field for difficulty, or classical/romantic/baroque etc. I suggest having as many fields as you can manage, because you can then search "what do I have by a Russian composer for easy piano and double bass from the 20thC?" questions. (Probably very little ) I also included a shelf code so I knew where to find the item!

Unfortunately for my fabulous system, I lost it all in a change of computer, then within the last 15 years I've probably quadrupled my music collection and haven't had the time to redo it. But I didn't find it an onerous task, and it was interesting to discover what I didn't know I had, even then.

Thanks currawong.

I am forever finding new great music hidden away in my 4-drawer lateral file cabinet; freebies from music teacher conventions, new materials stuff, samples, etc.... things that I play through and think, "this would be perfect for this festival or that" and then forgetting about it.

John, it's an adventurous and seemingly overwhelming task, which is why I am CONSIDERING tackling it in the summer.

By the way, I've done something similar with my various collections of china: I create a Pages doc, include pics and list every piece of Christmas china, formal china, dessert china, etc..., as this is the only way I can track what pieces and I have and what I still need.

I'm kind of into organizing....

Ooo, that gives me ideas. But I have to organise all the old family photos first, I think.

Most of my collection is in the form of pdfs stored in the tablet.
It is all in one large folder called Scores. When I need something I search the folder.
My books and loose papers are on a shelf alphabetical by composer with multi-composer collections after Z.
Method books are on top of the shelf and Suzuki materials are in the piano bench.
I have no motivation to get any more organized than that.

The exception is my ballet class repertoire, also in the tablet, which has its own breakdown -- a folder for slow 3s, a folder for moderate 2s, a folder for fast 2s etc. That's as organized as I get, because I know I will need it frequently and I will need to get to that type of music in under 90 seconds in class. Without that sort of pressure I will never create any sort of system

I did the photo thing 2 years ago; scanned all my baby pics, wedding album, and baby/school pics from the kids.

This summer I'm working on turning all of our home movies from 25+ years ago to the present into digital, then burning to dvd for each family member to have. All of our vhs and 8mm are already converted to dvd in a raw form. I upload them to the iMovie program and then edit them, adding text, fading in/out, etc.... It's a learning process for me.

That would be a big job or a small job, depending on how many books and sheets you possess.

I gave up trying to catalog everything. My studio has simply accumulated way too much junk. There are piles and piles of sheet music I inherited from several teachers who retired, and I'd say about 40% of it is pure garbage and things that I would never teach. And some of the freebies I got from Convention should have stayed at the Convention.

I do prune my collection from time to time. A teacher I know has a basket in her studio, with "take it, it's free" items in it, for her students.

I have a ton of vocal and other instrumental music, opera scores, etc, which I use constantly. My shelf system is pretty organised and works well. BUT if I'm not careful to put something back in the right shelf it could be lost for years! Cataloguing wouldn't really fix that; it would just tell you that you had that piece of music somewhere...