Creating a directory of sound libraries and plugins

Hello all,

I have an interesting task I'm trying to start on.  We have numerous sound libraries and plugins, the problem is that when we search for something specific or unusual it can take a very long time to figure out if we have it.  A few recent examples:  African choirs, caveman sounds, Egyptian loops...........  like, if I wanted to find a slide whistle in our library I'd have to use a number of approaches like guessing, Finder search or combing through what we have.

So I've thought of tackling this with building a directory in Excel, but it would be an enormous task and I don't know where to start.  Has anyone tackled this problem before?

thanks!

It sounds like you manage a team of people that are not familiar with your libraries. Speaking as an individual I have wished for something like this, but after some time I became familiar to the point where I don't need such a system and it would have required a considerable amount of time to analyze and build and input - not to mention, maintain. It would be best spent just using the libraries until they are ingrained. Now, to serve a team, you will quickly find the shortcomings of Excel. is not a relational database management system, and your endeavor could become a full time job.. The Kontakt player has a Database tab, which I have never needed to use, and for the same reason: I'm just an individual. Have you looked into that?

Hey Ken, thank you for the feedback!  I actually manage systems and software (among many other things) for a composer, aside from having a massive amount of content I don't use the stuff like he does, and especially with being template driven we don't find ourselves combing through the libraries very often after a template is built.  I don't know why I didn't think of searching Kontakt's database, great tip.  I think I'm definitely off of this idea, or at least just work on documenting some effective searching methods.  I already have an idea of how massive it could be because I have a giant software version tracking spreadsheet.   Thanks