Inventory of vinyl - what software do you use?

MS Access in use here. My collection is 80% classical and I wanted something I could set up as a relational database rather than a flat file given the multiple performances I wanted to track. If my collection were largely non-classical, then I would have used Excel and been very happy with the results. At this point, Access is tracking well over 4,000 LPs and over 13,000 individual works. For portability, I pull a report into Excel format to carry on my Palm.

The fields I use are:

- Composer
- Composer Dates
- Composer Period (Ancient, Baroque, Romantic, etc)

- Title of work
- Genre (orchestral, chamber, choral, etc)
- Type (Classical, Jazz, Blues, Rock, etc)
- Artists (conductor, orchestra, solists, etc. A single field for all since it can be easily searched and filtered.)

- Record Label
- Record Number
- Format (LP, CD, etc)
- Replacement Cost (for insurance purposes)
- Replacement Cost information source
- Filed Under (where the heck did I put that?)
- Comment (in which goes any information about pressing, recording engineer, etc.)

Since all of these fields can be searched and filtered, I can pull any subset of information I've been able to want or imagine.

And to Dan_ed's point about backup, I store both local and remote backup copies. The remote backups are stored on my accounts with my local ISP, my Yahoo email account and my Gmail email account. (Yes, overkill.)
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Excel will let you easily do sorting, filtering, custom reporting, development of labels (Excel plus Word) and pretty much anything else your hear desires. A full database would seem to be overkill to me unless your collection exceeds the 65536 rows currently allowed in Excel (I'm only at 1000 rows myself) but it mostly depends on which program you are most familiar with Excel or Access. Either one will more than do the job.

I have 8,000 LPs of which 75% are classical. I am currently using Visual FoxPro, though when I get the time I will switch over to FileMaker. You could use any spreadsheet or other flat file data base. However, you will have a lot of redundancy, paarticularly if you have a lot of classical albums. Since the files are small, performance will not suffer. However, you will need a lot of extra key strokes to enter the same amount of data versus a relational data base. For many of the fields in my data bases I have choices set up (mono/stereo) (33 1/3/45) (classical/movie/show/rock/pop) so that just one click is required to enter the data. If you are familiar with a relational data base such as MS Access and you have a more than 1,000 albums I would think you could save yourself a lot of data entry time by using the relational data base.

Fields In Manufacturer File:
Record Label
Secondary label (Shaded Dog/White Dog/Dead Dog, etc.)
Stamper Number
Manufacturer's Number
Genre (movie/classical/rock, etc.)
Price
Artist
Title
Key (for linking data bases)
Condition
Speed
Number of disks

Fields in Album File
Stereo or Mono
Composer
Title
Conductor
Orchestra
Year
Filed under
Category (solo violin, violin concerto, guitar, wind, etc.
Performer
Key

Using a spreadsheet you construct from scratch is a horrible idea. Why would you want to type all of that in when it has already been done?

There are a number of programs spefically designed to do what you want. Google "cd database software" or "music database software" and variations.

here's an old thread on the topic http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?gmusi&1098242973&openfrom&1&4#1

Quite a few responses here, and some very good ideas. I am going to try the two "specialized" programs mentioned here first - Music Label 2007 and the Gracenote AV Cataloger. Both companies offer free trials of their software, so there is nothing to lose. If neither of them are sufficiently customizable, I will probably give Excel a try. (I am surprised that more people haven't gone with Access or another database application, but if Excel works, that's fine with me.)

I agree that backups are essential - you must have been heartsick, Dan_ed. I try to back up about once a week, but if I put together this database/vinyl catalog, I will back it up separately to a DVD disc as well.

Styx - I don't know anything about programming, so can't do what you did, but I will add some of the categories you listed to whatever program I end up using.

Thank you, everyone, for your suggestions.

Holly