Re: Is it worth collecting rare CDs?

On Mar 31, 1:11 pm, Kirk McElhearn <kir...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 2009-03-31 20:01:18 +0200, jrsnfld <jrsn...@xxxxxxx> said:

Um, I just organize it with iTunes. I don't ever have to access the
files once they're ripped...

You still have to find them in iTunes.

Find them? If I don't want to sort by genre, artist (which is where I
put the composer's name) and album, I can just type a word into the
search box to find what I want. Takes three seconds.

Then speed is not an issue for the shelf method or the iTunes method.


For a collection of 100 discs,
I'm not sure which is faster--a shelf of familiar CD jewel boxes or
scrolling through iTunes.

Why would you scroll?

First of all due to my particular circumstances at the moment: I
scroll because I am using iTunes only sporadically and my files are
not well tagged--keep in mind that my CDs and LPs are not ripped to my
computer; only a few thousand mp3s and the like are on my computer. I
try to do some tagging as I create these sound files, but it requires
unwanted work. So all I have basically is a nice list of files by file
name. My naming system is probably good enough and searching is still
an option but not as clean as with tagged discs. This is not really an
important factor in this discussion, but it's true.

Second of all, I like context. I prefer folders of like things to
searching for specific files, just as I like going up to a specific CD
or LP on the shelf and being aware therefore of the spatial context,
and thus the context in which it is organized--the other CDs that are
related to it by dint of composer name. This is of course rigid
compared to a computer, but the awareness of context is a satisfying,
sometimes critical, aspect to inquiry in libraries.

In shelving systems, this context is partly subliminal, partly
conscious. When card catalogs were moved to electronic systems,
something was indeed lost in the research process. Now, with
searching, you can and do pull up multiple items for a search term.
This is often very good, and replaces some of the spatial context
well, but not always. That's why I like libraries that give you both--
spatial context of the shelf itself along with the searching power of
electronic catalogs. A search, like a library that has an electronic
catalog but closed access to the shelves, can short-circuit part of
the mental process, not necessarily to the benefit of the searcher

For a thousand discs, I'd say probably the
shelf is faster--I used to be able to find anything in about five
seconds that way. For 10,000 or more discs (50,000 or more "tracks"),
one can find stuff in less than 20 seconds with shelves. What's your
experience with iTunes?

See above.

So basically there's no significant advantage to iTunes in terms of
speed of searching...maybe on the order of a few seconds for a very
large collection. The gain is in the potential for ever expandable
filing systems and the multiple forms of organization, which are of
course the great benefits overall that anyone would want to exploit.
With shelves, one cannot reassemble the collection in different
contexts. You have to predetermine your context (ie, composers, genres
*or* dates, etc.) The same basic advantages and disadvantages a
computer should have compared to any physical filing system...once the
physical files are tranferred laboriously to computerized databases.

--Jeff

.

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