Over the course of a few semesters, even the smallest digital audio reserve project can generate hundreds of audio files. Labeling and organizing a large group of files presents special challenges that can be approached in a number of ways. The two fundamental decisions to be made are (1) how to assign names to the audio files and (2) how to organize them into folders (or directories). It is best to settle on a system for naming and organizing files before you start encoding. Try a number of methods and test them on a small scale to predict how they might work with your service. Fixing problems later, after you have processed hundreds of files, will be difficult and costly, so this will be time well spent.
From the survey of forty-two libraries providing digital audio services, I learned that there are nearly as many ways to name and organize digital audio files as there are libraries providing digital audio services. Although few libraries use identical methods, all use a combination of data elements drawn from the same five categories of data. Each category has certain advantages and disadvantages.