The not lost but hard to find art of vinyl records


Hello fellow goners, 

I'm looking for some advice and guidance today. For the last six years or so I've rediscovered the joy of vinyl. Over that time i've added and upgraded an analog branch to my streaming only system. Currently it's based on an origin live deck and arm with a few different cartridges, my favorites are hanna sl and an AT-VM760xSL. 

Over this time, I've also managed to acquire a modest collection of records which now fill a few of those ikea shelving units. Now some of you might be thinking aww I remember when I got started. :-) I did say modest. However with just this collection, it's become difficult to account which records or even which pressing or  pressings are a part of the collection. Specially and fortunately, when you have friends and family who know about your passion and want to contribute with purchases for special occasions. Or come over and want to hear album X to which I usually respond with browse the shelves and pick out something you wan to hear. 

To help with this, I started using a spreadsheet of artist, titles and a few other pieces of information but quickly ran into issues with the native spellchecker and my own horrible spelling mistakes. Leading to some funny and not so funny things in the list. 

So I'm wondering for those of you out there with collections of your own, how do you manage it? Does it just reside on a shelf? In your memory (if this is true do you have room for mine too? :-)

Thanks in advance for your suggestions and advice.

david  

dsv1

Thanks @whart very interesting to hear as about the pressings. I slowed down in record purchasing and shifted towards a best-pressing available and within budget do to space constraints. I don't want just any copy of dark side of the moon. i'm looking for the 'best' sounding version. 

I use Discogs as well, but entering 1000's of records is tedious and does take a LOT of time (I'm still not finished...).  However, I also have cataloged my rather large collection using an Excel spreadsheet (done, in much less time), which also is in my Dropbox account, so easily accessible on my phone while crate digging.  The best of both worlds.

Thanks @bluematter appreciate your feedback. I also found my much more modest collection to be a tedious exercise without much in return. Seems like there could be something much more modern and useful for album collection management. 

@dsv1 - there are apparently imaging apps that work with Discogs, but they won't distinguish different pressings, particularly for pre-bar code products. Since a lot of what I have sought out are particular pressings identifiable by matrices/deadwax, and not catalog number (which can remain the same), not helpful to me. But for general album management, you might research it. 

@dsv1 
I have been using CLZ Music to catalog records and CD’s for last 15 plus years. Completely customizable, folders etc and adding albums is a snap (scan bar code or manually key in title). 
https://clz.com/music/music-catalog