Edison Disc organization

[mbdittmar]

I've accumulated about 300 or so Edison discs over the last few years, and am wondering how you organize your discs. I suppose I could just go by number, but I'd prefer to organize by genre....what are some broad categories you might use for Edison Discs? I'm thinking pretty broad categories, like foxtrot/dance, classical, sacred, "novelty", etc. I imagine this topic has probably been done to death elsewhere, but I'm wondering specifically about diamond discs. Thanks !

[larryh]

Hi,

I have sort of decided to eventually divide them by early black label and latter white label records.. Maybe even a distinction for the very earliest ones before the dimples in the records. After that I am dividing by popular music dance; Popular vocals, Classical Vocals, Salon music, Orchestra and Band, Solo instruments with divisions for violin and cello, piano, and other odd such as bell, xylophone, ect. I also have a set for christmas and religious vocals as well as dialog. Any system that makes them easier to locate will work.. I do need however to figure some easy way to figure out where each selection is within the categories which is the real problem.

[garret]

Larry's got the right way of doing it. If your collection gets bigger, you may want to consider arranging your records by catalog number.

[matty]

It might be worth getting your hands on a DD catalogue, and organising your disc's in a similar fashion as they are listed in the catalogue.
I don't have a DD cat, but my cylinder cat lists Vocal solo's, duets, trio's, quartette's etc, Sacred, Discriptive, Light Opera, Grand Opera, Vaudeville, Band, Dance, Orchestra, Instrumental solo's & miscellaneous to name a few.

I've found it easier to seperate the etched label & paper labels, but I keep mine in order of their catalogue numbers. All my etched label 50,000's & 80,000's live in my C19, and I have a small DD cabinet which houses my 50,000 series paper labels. My 80,000 paper labels are sitting on the shelf of my A100 until I either find another cabinet or a set of albums.
I've printed up index books for both the C19 & cabinet, & written in the song titles to make finding a disc easy. The biggest problem with keeping them in numerical order is on the rare occasion I find more disc's, and I have to slot them in, move a bunch of records over & rub out & rewrite the song titles.

I guess alot really depends on the storage system you use.
If you store them in plastic crates or on shelving without specific numbered slots, it's probably easier to allot a section of shelving or crate to a certain genre, perhaps keeping them in alphebetical order of song title or artist, and flick through them to find what you want.

These are the books I made up. They're the same size as the instruction manual. The top section of each page is the "L" side, and the "R's" are on the bottom. The top shelf is in the front half of the book, and bottom shelf in the back half.
Why Edison didn't supply a similar book with his machines I'll never know. I'd have no hope of finding a disc quickly without these.

[larryh]

Your right about having a number system which is a must for this type of records.. Some of my early brunswick machines had a index list mounted right on the inside of the cabinet door so when you opened it you could easily find the title you wanted. Even had edison left a small shelf as brunswick under the record files it would have made a convenient place for list and catalogs ect.

It sounds like the catalog previously mentioned is one of the category type catalogs edison put out. I have a couple of those also.. But years ago my original full listing catalog fell apart and it was listed by artist and groups with some sub heads of types such as symphony, or piano besides the alphabetical list of artist. which is a different method and actually is much easier to find the records in . As to storage systems that is another topic I haven't come to a conclusion on either. I have some old record cabinets that have dividers that will allow for about 12 or more records between the slats and that works to at least have a place to put them.. But it is still hard to go though and find what you want. I too have piles of them by types of music but they are getting very difficult to manage. For regular victor type records I used to type labels on the end top of the albums and tell either the artist or a category like Piano or Orchestra ect which at least made them a bit easier to find.

[ultona]

I'm up to well over 1000 DDs now. As I've cleaned and re-sleeved them, I write the catalog number on the upper right hand corner of the sleeve and shelf the disc. Eventually, I'm going to arrange them in numerical order and use the printed out discography I have both in my computer and a paper copy of as my "giude" to what I have so I can stop accidentally buying duplicate and triplicates of what I already have!!

Sean

[mbdittmar]

Sean,

I've basically been doing what you have. After I've cleaned them and put them in a sleeve, I write the number ( if there is one ) on the upper right hand side of the sleeve. I then mark the condition and sound quality of both sides of the record on the sleeve as well, although this is pretty subjective. I then have an excel spreadsheet into which I enter the info. I've never gotten around to putting them in numerical order yet. I've got some in the C-150, most in a large trunk by the C-150, some in a fruit crate by the C-150, and some in a box in the basement which have yet to be cleaned. Not a lot of organization there !

Thanks for everyones input so far. I hope to hear more ideas from the fellow board members.

[maroongem]

For all my keepers such as DDs, cylinders and shellac, I have put them on Excel spreadsheets listing number, artist, condition and most importantly, location!!! The shellacs are all in albums marked 1 on up and are sorted by size, genre and label. When you have a goodly number of records, there is nothing worse than going to look for a particular record and you can't find it. It still happens on occasion when I don't put it back in the appropriate album but for the most part I know where everything is that we have cataloged to date. The cylinders are all in cylinder cabinets divided by wax/2M Indestructible and Blue Amberol/4M indestructible and are listed by drawer and peg number. I have tried to keep them together by artist and just the Billy Murray records (including duets and quartets he sang on) take up most of a 247 peg cabinet!
This is still a work in progress with the shellacs as we still have several thousand to go through.

[marcapra]

Organizing records is one of the toughest parts of this hobby! And I'm a librarian with training in cataloging! Every time I start to organize my records, I get overwhelmed by the size of the job. I agree with a couple of the guys above that if your collection gets big, putting them in numerical order is the way to go. Why? Because you can use Edison's own record catalogs to find the song you want by number! Trying to write over what Edison has already done seems foolish! Edison has already divided the records into major types by the catalog numbers: 50 thousand series is popular; 80 thousand is religious and classical; 82 thousand is operatic; etc. Charles Gregory's four volume catalog of the white label 50 thousand series is a great help. I have heard that he is working on a similar catalog of the 80 thousand series! That would be great as there is not a lot of information on those, but you can still use the Edison catalogs for all of the DD's.

[matty]

Yes, I think organising DDs in numerical order is the easiest way for me. I gave up trying to keep them in groups according to artist, because so many DDs have 2 different artists on the same record.
I found the opposite to be true for cylinders though. I had my cylinders organised by artist until about a month ago, and decided to put them in numerical order. Not having any reference catalogue written up, I'm finding it impossible to find what I'm after.