Digital Library maintenance is a long boring process. I’m not even sure if it’s a rewarding task. I know I’ll be grateful for my work later but right now I’m feeling the carpel tunnel creep into my left wrist.
What is digital library maintenance? It’s the process or organizing and naming my digital files in a way that I can access and find them easily and quickly. Think to your own collection of books and things – it has a certain order to it that lets you find what you want, when you want. Although maintaining a real physical library is more labor intensive, do not misrepresent the hours of work that is put into organizing a digital library.
Luckily iTunes and other software automatically organizes your files for you. You don’t have to think about where your music is because iTunes organizes it neatly for you. Unfortunately for me I have a perfectionist streak that forces me to do all my organization my self.
For my music I have all my music in one folder aptly named ‘Music.’ In that directory I have four sub-directories: #-d, e-l, m-r, and s-z. This thwarts the onslaught that happens when I’ve tried to view all my music in one directory. With sub-divisions I can load a portion of my music without fear of a hang-up. Essential.
For the rest of my digital media, namely videos, I have them arranged in the folder ‘Video’. Each file is named according to Boxee’s media file name conventions. This lets Boxee scrape my videos accurately so as to pull the accurate information for each video. A pain to perform at first yet the luxury afforded later is so very delightful.
In any case it’s time for me to finish this round of clean-up. It will be so lovely to rest.
The importance of keeping things organized is a time consuming act. I like knowing exactly where my belongings are. I get great joy from being able to tell someone with complete certainty if I have the item they want and exactly where it can be found.