Roll Inventory and Rollography
By Robbie Rhodes
Glenn Thomas says he is trying to catalog a few thousand rolls. You can easily get the basic inventory list with a portable cassette recorder. Just announce the roll brand and number and record it for later transcription. The title can be recorded as a cross-check.
After the list of roll numbers is transcribed it can be linked with an existing data base of roll numbers to get the particulars (title, artist, music style, etc.), and a draft list of your inventory printed out. (Put a copy of this list in a safe place, in case your collection is destroyed the next day.) Then, at your leisure, you can physically inspect the rolls (and play them) to add your data fields for "musical quality" and "physical condition", etc.
The "existing data base of roll numbers" exists only in the reference books, as far as I know. I've entered the Vincent Lopez Ampico data from the Obenchain book, plus a few other categories, but my "Ampico Rollography" is only beginning.
I use a separate file to cross-reference re-cuts. Especially cumbersome is trying to keep track of a favorite song that appears on several 10-tune nickelodeon or organ rolls. It's that same song and same basic arrangement in each instance, but sometimes the instrumentation stops are different, and so on.
Mark Fontana inquired about a source for correct titles and composers names. My disc file of old sheet music titles is less than 1000 entries, and so is only a very small percentage of what's needed. Actually, I get a lot of information from the Ampico and Duo-Art and Welte books. I am slowly copying the data from these fine reference books into disc files. (Does anyone want to help? !)
Robbie Rhodes
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