Tip:
Establish a sensible music library numbering system.

The issue:
You run out of space in the "A" drawer of the anthem filing cabinet. You have no library numbering system in place to be able to find your music without having it stored physically in alphabetical order. Furthermore, you currently have no way to distinguish between your five different arrangements of "Amazing Grace".

Solution:
Assign library numbers to your music, which give you a unique identifier. Then you'll be able to find your music by something other than a non-unique title, and you can store it in library number order instead of alphabetically.

Recommendations:
Use a mix of alphabetic and numeric characters when assigning library numbers, which will allow you to see at a glance which ensemble they are intended for.

Also, start with a number that has enough digits to accommodate the size of your library.

Examples:
A-0001 might be the first piece in your Adult choir anthem library, giving you the capacity of 9,999 pieces of music before you run out of digits.
Y-0001 might be the first piece in your Youth choir anthem library.
OR-0001 might be the first piece in your Orchestra library.

Question:
Why "pad" the numeric part of the library number with zeros?

Answer:
Because computers read numbers from left to right, and you will want to print a listing in library number order at some point. If you don't pad it with zeros, the following result will print: A-1, A-10, A-100, A-1000, etc.

For an example of software that helps save your time on Administration tasks, download a demo of the Church Musician software through the link below.