[Chicagojcb]

Hi, I just got Mobile Sheets and am both excited and overwhelmed by all the options.  I play classical piano and mandolin, and also two mandolin-like instruments for ethnic music.  I am trying to figure out how to capture the information I want for everything and to plan how my music will be organized.  

Does anyone have thoughts re: collections vs libraries for completely unrelated music?  Is it easier to keep everything in one data base?  

Classical musicians, how to do you capture opus and catalog information for scores?  What else do you find useful besides the obvious (composer, etc)?  

Anyone have thoughts about the single-folder-for-songs question?  Most of my music is going to be scores only with the occasional lyric page that may or may not be part of the score pdf.  

Other advice?  Thank you!
JCB

[Lester]

Let me suggest a method for your thought regarding collections vs ibraries.

I keep all my church music in one library because I can synchronise libraries with anyone else and all tehy get is the church stuff. My country music band's songs are in another library and my wife's school stuff (because she teaches piano) is in yet another library. This way of working seems to work well and help me keep unrelated projects separate.

It might be worth mentioning that as the church stuff is shared with a larger group of musicians, we keep the shared stuff on the church's web site or server where anyone authorised can access and load what they want. I backup my libraries to my personal Dropbox space and the settings file (which I save separately), I copy onto the church site so that anyone who wants to follow what everyone else is doing can choose to load the settings - or not, as they wish.

[Lawrie]

There seems to be quite a number of users that disagree, their main thrust being that collections should be sufficient*, but I'm with Lester on this.

I'm involved with 8 different bands, one of which I can't use MS for.  I use a separate library for each of the other bands, plus a couple of practice libraries as well as the default library which I use for testing purposes.

My reasoning is thus:

1. I mostly play a mix of chairs in each band.
   
   
2. In general there is little or no literature crossover between bands (2*Concert Bands, 2*Brass bands [one is a Salvation Army band, the other is not], 2*Big Bands [one is not in MS], a small jazz ensemble and my church band (not the SA one)).  Differences include style of music, level of difficulty, what chair I play in the band etc..
   
   
3. keeping different libraries allows for less set list and collection management per library thus making overall management much easier.
   
   
4. Sometimes the same title will crop up in different bands with a totally different chart, might be arranger, key, clef (I play Trom with bass, tenor and transposed treble charts, as well as tuba with bass or transposed treble charts, and sometimes Eupho with bass, tenor and transposed treble charts, and even the occasional Trumpet or Cornet session, all depending on which band and whether I'm playing my chair or depping for someone else).
   
   
5. I can minimise metadata needs thus streamlining the management process even more.
   

These are just my main deciding factors, you will have your own.  Before you settle on a particular process have a play and don't set so much up it's a big deal to start over.

* They are, of course, wrong.    

[BRX]

There seems to be quite a number of users that disagree, their main thrust being that collections should be sufficient*, but I'm with Lester on this.

I'm one of the quite a number. I use collections für my bands, two of which are bigbands,

In general there is little or no literature crossover between bands (2*Concert Bands, 2*Brass bands [one is a Salvation Army band, the other is not], 2*Big Bands [one is not in MS], a small jazz ensemble and my church band (not the SA one)).  Differences include style of music, level of difficulty, what chair I play in the band etc..

In the bigbands there is some spillover and I like to use the same files. If there is a need for another annotation I make another snippet for the collection. (Also versioning is coming).

keeping different libraries allows for less set list and collection management per library thus making overall management much easier.

I agree with lesser setlists. This could be better with an archive function. No real improvenent for collection management, though.

Sometimes the same title will crop up in different bands with a totally different chart, might be arranger, key, clef (I play Trom with bass, tenor and transposed treble charts, as well as tuba with bass or transposed treble charts, and sometimes Eupho with bass, tenor and transposed treble charts, and even the occasional Trumpet or Cornet session, all depending on which band and whether I'm playing my chair or depping for someone else).

All of this won't be a concern when Mike's versioning is implemented (also I think "chairs" should always have all sheets for their instrument group available. I really don't like the frequent excuses if someone is missing "I can't play that" or "I don't have that sheet").

I can minimise metadata needs thus streamlining the management process even more.

I prefer maximising metadata management, having as much of it available as possible. That's easier within one library.

These are just my main deciding factors, you will have your own.  Before you settle on a particular process have a play and don't set so much up it's a big deal to start over.

Correct.

* They are, of course, wrong.     **

** No, they are not 

[itsme]

Most has already been said before, just a few additional thoughts from my side.
Having just one library and handling bands and the like in collections is the usual standard case. This is how MobileSheets was originally designed and it was fully sufficient for years. Handling multiple libraries is a special case that has been added much later. It is useful and helpful in certain cases like sharing a complete library with a group of fellow musicians or separating completely independent repertoires. 
Synchronizing several devices for a single user or songs that are required for more than one line-up are strong arguments for using a single library and managing different groups with collections. Imho collections are more intuitive and much easier to handle.

[Lawrie]

Hi BRX,
you are, of course, entitled to your opinion, but for me it simply isn't granular enough.  Now, if I could have a kind of super collection that was a container for all the collections associated with any particular band then perhaps multiple libraries might be less attractive, but on the other hand, multiple libraries makes for smaller databases that results in faster searches...

Plus, I have virtually ZERO chart crossover between any of the bands I play in.  The way I see it, it makes no sense to have so many irrelevant charts available for a band that will NEVER have use for them.

I have absolutely no idea what Mike means by "versioning", nor how it will work.  There simply doesn't seem to be any explanation anywhere.  Until I understand the mechanics I cannot pin any hopes on it.  You seem to think just mentioning that magic word should be a panacea to all everybody's database management issues - maybe it will be but I still don't know, nor can I imagine it in my particular circumstances.

I suspect we will never see eye to eye on this issue.

FWIW, multiple library facilities was the final deciding factor for me choosing MS over any other product.

[Lawrie]

itsme,
If multiple libraries is a recent development then consider, there must have been sufficient demand for it for Mike to have even considered its inclusion.

I currently have no need to share charts with others.  This may happen but I wouldn't hold my breath.

At this point I only have one device, a situation I want to remedy but not yet.  When I do, I'll just have to pay the price of synchronising multiple libraries individually unless Mike comes up with a way to automate it - I suspect that could well be on his radar, but probably is not a high priority.

[BRX]

Lawrie, I've seen your nick so often I assumed you would have followed the other threads with requests and what Mike has in the pipe.

Versioning is a big project which will add the functionality to assign different versions of a song (different instruments, different annotations, different sheets) to one song entry (I don't now if "subsongs" is a good description). How and when Mike will implement this I have to leave to him.

You're of course entitled to your opinion as well and as itsme said there are user cases (mainly for syncing with other people's libraries) where separating them makes sense (personally I think sharing the sheets outside of MS so everyone manages his own sheets with MS, forscore, or printing as paper and however else is the better way).

But MS historically and conceptually comes from the other end, that is managing one's own library of sheets on one or more of his own devices. And for me personally it has become an extraordinary organization tool for my whole collection of sheets which is vastly bigger than the comparitively few sheets for my bands.
It defeats the purpose to spread that over multiple libraries and your reasons for splitting them are things which are mostly not even incoviences for me. (All IMHO).

[Lawrie]

Hi BRX,
I follow what I can, but I also have a life outside of MS so there are limits.

I've certainly seen versioning mentioned, but never any explanation though I've had a few guesses.  What you have said makes some sense for certain circumstances, but it won't be until it is implemented and we can see the actual realisation that I will be able to tell if it will fit my needs and mind set.  I've mentioned before that I'm something of a control freak when it comes to computer systems.  That mind set must be satisfied

You mentioned some of MS history, but I have no real knowledge of that, I only know about the product I purchased 2 years ago.

[itsme]

We don't want to start a religious war about using multiple libraries or not. Just trying to explain pros and cons so that Chicagojcb can make his own decision. 

"a kind of super collection" - the songs tab?

"multiple libraries makes for smaller databases that results in faster searches" - speed is not a relevant argument. 
A really huge database takes a few seconds more when switching the library, once the library is loaded there's almost no recognizable difference in searching or opening songs and other common use cases. 
I have a really huge library with more than 20000 songs and MobileSheets still works fast and flawlessly. So yes, I also use multible libraries. But not for separating bands (all my bands and line-ups have many overlappings). One is my "active" library I use on stage, the 20000 entry is used for maintaining all my fakebooks and a third one is just for testing so that I can call "clear library" whenever it makes sense.

[Lester]

For me the reason multiple libraries works bette than multiple collections is that (... menu >) Sync library sychronises the whole library. I cannot find Sync Collection so that I only share selected collections and not the entire library. And now Mike has added Switch Library to the ... menu it is so quick to switch between projects. I use collections to represent the different books and other places we have sourced our 600 songs from because often someone will refer to a song by name and at other times by the its song number in a particular song book.

For the OP, Chicagojcb, the usefulness of using separate collections and libraries is just one of the choices you will make in your journey with MS (MobileSheets). Some things will be obvious to you early on and some things you may decide to change later on. Have a great time getting to know and use MS.

[Chicagojcb]

Thank you all for your thoughts. I infer that at least for now my needs are not complex enough to worry about multiple libraries -- i can tee up pieces by genre and instrument. As my library grows and I learn more, I can come back to this thread. Appreciate you all!