So You Wanna Be A Librarian AND A Recording Engineer?

One of the most thankless tasks we've got is filing. And Lordy is it important! Boring as it is, it is worth spending a little time and money up front to head off as much of your future archiving nightmare as possible.

Storing Stuff

You are going to have to store stuff. Tapes of all sizes and types, possibly owned by a wide variety of individuals. If you have any success at all, in fairly short order the neat little bookshelf you used to have in your first apartment, the one over the liquor store, is gonna fill up with tapes 'n stuff and you're gonna need something more substantial.

Start by setting up an archive outside of your control room. Buy the cheapest utility metal shelving you can and put it in your basement, garage, attic (that's the one I chose) or wherever. Buy enough shelf space to give you capacity for tapes, files, computer backups, books, and magazines for the next five years. Keep only the current stuff in the control room (stuff from the last sixty days, for instance.)

Part of the problem is the variety of media. Make provision for every kind and size of stuff you can think of. Office supply stores sell cardboard archiving boxes of all shapes and sizes. Avail yourself.

Then, every sixty days, take a half day (or night) to clear out your control room and properly label and store stuff in your archive.

Also, hand off as much stuff to your clients as possible. Once the project is done, give them the tapes, notes and stuff. If they want you to hang onto it, limit the term to a year or two. We are all drowning in data. Don't take on more than your fair share!

Cataloguing Stuff

Along with your efforts at physically archiving, you definitely need to keep a written log of what you've got. These days, it's easy enough to keep a simple little database in Excel or 1-2-3. I use a numbering system based on the date, so that February 7, 1994 is 940207. This sorts nicely in chronological order, and makes stuff simple to remember and find. Multiple documents from the same day all get their own name.

You also want to note something about what each item is, what kind of media it is, and why in the world you are keeping it. You might also want to note who owns it and who owns the copyright and phonorecord rights. A stenographer's notebook kept open by the console is a great place to jot these things down as you are working. Load them into more formal storage later. Also, keep the stenographers' notebooks as a backup record.

And when you unload stuff to your clients, make a note in your records that they got it, so that later, when . . .