LP collection management...what do you guys do?

Reading your post I get the sense that your question is not so much "how do you keep track of your collection" but "is there a method to determining what you have, what you want and if the former should fund the latter".
The answer to this depends on how you view your collection. For some they want a historical collection, certain records will be representative of certain movements within music. Some of these are more historical markers than they are listenable. Others want a comprehensive collection but oriented to a specific genre or artist. The Beatles collectors, the punk collectors etc. Others take an investment point of view and as rare or limited editions come out they buy multiple copies whether they need them or not. This oftentimes is again limited by genre.

So in the end it comes down to how you view your collection. I myself have a few records for "nostalgia" value. However if I need the money to fund current purchases it isn't too hard to weed a few things out. This is easier to do with CD's than it is with LP's because it's harder to sell LP's and get any money out of them. So is the trouble worth it? To me not generally. As I get older however the trouble of moving all this stuff gets tougher and I have been thinking about cleaning things out just for the sake of size. But then I have a couple thousand records and about double that in CD's. I live in a studio apartment and I collect books as well. I don't foresee myself settling down anytime soon so the space aspect gets tough.

So only you know the answer to your question but these are some of the styles of thinking that go into it. And with classical I have quit thinking comprehensively. I realized that I was never gonna be able to listen to it all and that I wasn't going to like it all anyway. So I have scaled down to a few composers and works that I really like and want to get more intimate with. For instance I have 8 different versions of Bruckner's 8th Symphony. This way I get to know the work and the multiple interpretations help that. Do I listen to all Bruckner's symphonies? No, I have heard them all but concentrate mainly on the 4th and the 8th. For Mahler it's the 1st, 5th, 6th and 9th. I listen to Schubert leider but find his symphonies uninteresting etc. This comes down to taste and how you want to spend your time. Again, it doesn't hurt me to have some LP's up on the shelf but if needed the money or the shelf space then I think it would be worthwhile to sell some choice items to fund some future purchases.

Try CD Trustee located at www.base40.com. The professional series has one of the most creative ways to manage CDs and LPS.

Aceto, try divorcing her. It will cost you much more. :-)

The method I used for keeping track of memos, reports, and the like, I called "Vertical Chronological Filing System". In other words, after using an item throw it on the top of a pile. This also works for CDs. What you use frequently naturally rises to the top of the pile. Every so often, throw away the bottom half of the pile.

This is not completely a joke...it actually works as well as any other system I tried. People were astonished that I could come up with memos in a few seconds ("let's see..down about 3 inches") that would take them an hour of searching through file cabinets.

i only have about 400 lps and i dont know where i would put another 400...but i would find a place. so no, do not sell off some of your collection. im 25 years old and i regret selling off some of my cds and video games when i was 12-18 to pay for other stuff.

tastes change yes but you will eventually come back down memory lane, listen to the lps and realize that you dont like the records for nostalgia sake but they are actually great records.

if you have any doubts whatsoever, do not sell.