I've finally decided to try to get a hold on our Music Library this summer. I know it's going to be a huge undertaking, but I can't deal with the unorganized mess the previous director left behind any longer.

I've decided it's best to start from scratch. I've never done this before. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Here's my idea so far:

Step 1: Find every piece of music the school owns, and sort it into categories. I'm thinking Concert Band, Marching Band, Solo and Ensemble, and Method/Pedagogy Books. There will be sub-categories like UIL music, concert and festival, jazz, etc., but I'm only worried about getting them into the main categories right now.

Step 2: Use the Charms Library excel template to notate title, composer, etc. Upload template to Charms and print a label for each piece of music. Has anyone used the box label maker in charms? How well does it work? I've also thought about using mail merge.

Step 3: Assign a number for each piece of music. Not exactly sure how I want to do this. Thinking about assigning number ranges for each category. 0-9,999 would be concert music, 10,000-19,999 would be marching music, etc. We are a small 3A school, so I can't imagine ever having more than 10,000 pieces of music per category.

Step 4: Put music in 11.5x14.5 clasp envelopes. These are basically the same size and type of the old RBC envelopes. Attach label to each envelope.


Step 5: Place envelopes numerically into legal size filing cabinets.


Step 6: Drink an adult beverage, and pray I never have to do this again!


So, what am I missing? Is there a better way to approach this? Any and all advice is appreciated and welcomed!