Cataloging sheet music

I wanted to see how many musicians use LibraryThing to catalog their sheet music, and what kind of tags you use. Aside from the need for manual entry, I have found it a good resource. It has helped me many times now from buying the same piece twice! I particularly like sorting pieces by ensemble type, e.g., two flutes, or flute piano and voice, as often I have to pull pieces for specific small ensembles.

Composer is currently an established alternative for author on the pull-down list; it would be helpful also if Arranger were an alternative for Author and for Co-author.

Any tips or comments?

Interesting. I am actually in the middle of adding CDs (Audio Recordings) to my library, and, as with you, it should prevent me from purchasing multiples.

I find with recordings that the alternatives to Author are many; I tried Producer, then Composer, then Creator, then Performer (key instrument played or voice sung.)

I ask myself, should the alternative to Author be restricted to particular role or should it be the key person, such as the Creator (of the idea), the key performer, the label; I'm not sure. At the moment, I'm "betwixt and between" several methods.

BTW, I find that I am learning more about my music collection than I had thought would be the case, and I love having found this out.

I haven't yet though I need to. If only they had the lovely ISBNs (some of my scores do actually).

I also am finding that a good portion of my CDs are digitalized version of early analog music, and I'm not sure what date and company should be used.

BUT, on the other hand, what IS available already on LT has been extraordinarily helpful for my own purpose, and I would be satisfied with the way things are now.

> barbN

I do , however, second your request that "Arranger" be added to the list under Author.

>1 BarbN:, >4 Diane-bpcb:

On the 'Arranger' thing: you might start a thread on it in the group 'Recommend Site Improvements'.

It was recommended years ago. I don't think any changes to the list are a high priority.

Well, there are more staff now, so it might be worth a re-try.

I have a feeling that the powers-that-be don't want to encourage the cataloguing of recorded music and films in any way for fear of having more members doing it. Those, like me, that have been doing it for ages have to compromise with their own work-arounds and I am happy with that.

>1 BarbN: >2 Diane-bpcb: My CD collection is largely classical and I generally use Composer for Author. In the case of recitals or popular music the Performer usually goes in the Author slot. Thinking of work combination, it seems to me that all recordings of, say, Mozart's Jupiter symphony are properly combined regardless of conductor or orchestra. Others may not agree.

I think the most important thing from the site's viewpoint is that it is made very clear just what format each entry is in, and that includes sheet-music. Work combination issues are made simpler if that is clear.

Bump! What search databases do you use for adding sheet music? Or do you just add them manually?

I'm glad you bumped this. I just experimented and found that if I added a large university library (I chose Yale) to my sources in the add books section I could add a composer and opus number (I chose Brahms 88) to my catalog. I will still have to add the composer manually which may for some defeat the purpose, but works for me.

Oooh, opus numbers! Need to try that one.

I’m new to LT, and really want to use it to catalogue my huge sheet music library, much of which is contained in multiple-composer anthologies. Has anyone found a way to add individual titles and composers within a larger collection? I imagine that collectors of short story volumes would need the same search capability. I habe not found any home library apps that include this. Any advice for a workaround?

>12 BevBook:

Some users here will catalogue short stories separately, with "short story" (or "essay" or "poem", etc) in trailing brackets; then, link the anthology to each entry via the Contained In/Contains feature.

There are various arguments for and against this approach. It does meet the searchability criterion, however.

Just spent weeks organizing my Excel file for concert band music. I used a convert to MARC tool to map columns to MARC fields then create the MARC file. LT does not recognize my mrk file as a MARC file and will not upload it. Evidently LT is not full MARC????

Guess I just want to warn people not to spend time as I did if this process will not work. I need the music in an easily searched format for my conductors' uses.

.mrk isn't MARC; it is human readable "broken MARC". You need to convert to .mrc. What tool did you use to convert from Excel?