Magazines... Storing and Organizing (Oh, my!)

[Elizabeth]

I hope this thread is not a duplicate-- I tried doing a search in the forum before starting a new topic.  I'm attempting to do some house cleaning here...


How do folks organize their magazines?  How do you store them?

And, very importantly--

Do you have a way to organize/keep track of what is *inside* the magazines, so you can retrieve information when you want to research?

Any and all suggestions appreciated.

Some I have in binders here, some just shoved in a file cabinet, and some stored with more collectible stuff.  It's not a very organized system.

[Mike Scott]

How do folks organize their magazines?  How do you store them?

I bag, board (when needed) and box my mags, using stuff you can get from any comics supply place.

You might find some useful info on this page on my website.
http://www.geocities.com/unifan2001/collectorguide.html

Do you have a way to organize/keep track of what is *inside* the magazines, so you can retrieve information when you want to research?

You mean index them? Yikes!

[Wicked Lester]

Depending on how much $ you want to spend you can check out this place
www.bagsunlimited.com.
Once your mags are bagged/boarded and in a storage box you can either use half an index card with important notes attached to the left corner of the outside sleeve or use a P touch label for quick reference notes.

[Elizabeth]

You mean index them? Yikes!

Yeah... yikes and yinkies.

Tonight I was looking for a particular issue of a magazine I wanted to take to Monster Bash to be autographed, and it was a bit of a shuffle.  (I did find it, though.)

It struck me that if I had them catalogued, it might be easier to find things when I wanted particular covers/articles/etc.

Then I thought maybe I should lay down until I recovered from being struck, and the thought had passed...

[Mike Scott]

It struck me that if I had them catalogued, it might be easier to find things when I wanted particular covers/articles/etc.

That it would, but what a chore! I don't know what mags you collect, but some have already been indexed (meaning, for the most part, a list of the articles, etc.). Some current mags' websites are also a good place to get that info.

[Jscareshock]

My magaznes accumulate in piles.  Once I get tired of looking at them they go in bags.  I gave up boarding magazines.  And then they go in boxes in issue order and by title so i have all FMs in one box (actually more) Creepy, Scary Mosnters etc in different boxes.  I do not catalog what is in them.  When feeling nostalgic I'll oen a box and randomly read issues.

[cyberschizoid]

Oh I need to do this too!!!!

I now have so many genre magazines I really want to organise them but don't have tons of space.

Also I like them to be fairly easy to access for flicking thru and reading...

I have copies of FM, Monster Bash, Scary Monsters, House of Hammer, Monster Mag, Dark Side, Gorezone UK, Monster World, Quasimodo's Monster Magazine, Rue Morgue, Fangoria, Chiller Theatre, Monsterscene, Spacemen, Starlog, HorrorHound...loads of one-offs, various fanzines, Film Threat, Cashiers du Cinemart....and tons more!!!!

What does everyone else have in their collection?

Do you organise via era, genre, country...?

I have a few doubles too...anyone desperate for anything in particular?

[michblk]

I try to organize by title and number.  Pretty boring eh?

BK

[BaronLatos35]

I organize them the same way as I do my comics: bagged, boarded in boxes by title (including subtitles). I then take an extra board and place a Post It colored index/file tab on it with the title, marking the begining or end of a particular title.

Afterwards, my comics/magazines are filed away neatly and meticulously, fitting right in with my personality.lol.

[tv horror]

A thread after my own heart. I have 5000+ magazines and UMMM I have indexed nearly all of them baring a few hundred. I have complete sets of all the majors and the minors one offs and such with a horror or sci-fi slant. They are all on index cards which I have put into photo albums so that I can flip each one over, as for the magazines these are in vinyl pockets and placed within a binder. I have them by title FM etc and it is only a matter of taking a binder out after I find the contents on the index and there you have it.  I don't even have to touch the mag until I need too as I can see both the back and front covers but fear not I have plans!!!! 

[Elizabeth]

Thanks to all who replied here... you have given me some good ideas, and sparks of inspiration.

I don't have very many magazines at present, but it struck me (when I was rooting through them looking for one I wanted to take to Monster Bash to get autographed) that it would be smart to organize them *before* things got too complicated. 

A year ago, I organized a bunch of cooking magazines, and one of the posts here reminded me of that, and it struck me I might use the same method to organize monster mags.

I photocopied the table of contents from these cooking magazines, and then I was able to highlight the tested recipes that worked out well (while still being able to scan to see if anything else sounds good to try).  I put the photocopies in clear sheet protectors in a binder-- so I can easily flip through them when I want to look something up now, and then go right to whichever issue it's in.

It would be nice to have something that could be sorted (like a database) but even a rough index would be a good start.

And I am leaning towards taking them out of file drawers and binders and just going with the archive boxes.  I can get those at a local comic book shop here.