In the last post I’d extracted 1720 unique catalogue numbers from the 1985 BBC Sound Effects Catalogue and pasted them into Excel. As well as deduplicating the list I ran quick sort to begin the process of matching up what was in the catalogue with what I had in my list.
Contents
Spot D Mistake
I found a mistake quite quickly from just looking at the NH results. In fact I got abit lucky because a typo meant I spotted something early on. I’d put a ‘+’ after the letter match pattern. This meant I found a NH1DA. You can’t have two letters, so I knew I’d messed up the regex and it was easy to fix that. Now it matched NH1D.
Perfect? No! There was clearly an OCR error here. Just above the match for ‘NH1DA f02’ was ‘NH10A f01’. The f numbers are the band (track) numbers and it’s very easy to see – even dislocated from the text saying what’s on those bands – that the OCR has failed here and turned a 0 into a D. I’d have banned the use of the D letter as well as I and O, but that’s hindsight and also counter factual.
True Cat?
So, I need to accept some errors like this. But, err, hold on, isn’t NH1D a valid catalogue number? Couldn’t that be wrong here and still be a real catalogue number elsewhere? Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? I’m going to end up with a list of catalogue numbers which aren’t in my list already, so how do I know if they are truly valid?
Actually, that’s not as bad as it seems. When I search for NH1D in the text file I see quickly that it’s a bad match and can remove it with alacrity. Equally, I can search around the new cat. numbers in the text and see if there is corroborating evidence. In fact, I can usually see what page number they are on and look at the physical catalogue to see what that says.
So, I’m one down and the total is now 1719 entries in the catalogue. The total number of catalogue entries will be lower than the 1720 it seemed a moment ago. Or will it?? There’s an another possibility.
The scanning may have missed out some valid cat numbers completely. In that case I will have to check the ones I have in my list against the catalogue to see if those are indeed in the 1985 catalogue, but didn’t get scanned.
Or, more interestingly, if they are not in the 1985 catalogue. That could mean they were deleted or were added after that point in time, overlapping with the CD era.
I haven’t mentioned the fact that the first CD – ECD1 is in the 1985 catalogue too, but that’s something I’ll come back to.
So, if you’ll excuse me I will now go at it with Excel to sort and then sift through all of those comparing with my existing list.
Intermission
Catalogue Story Short
Thanks for waiting. Well, I was surprised how many I had in my list that were not in the output of the 1985 Catalogue scan. Dismayed might be a better word. In the EC catalogue numbers alone I found 148 cat numbers on my list which were apparently not in the catalogue.
I began by assuming that most of those were in the catalogue, but had failed to scan. There was a more obvious error too. When I’d created my list I’d stupidly started guessing about missing entries and I’d ended up with a load of speculation. That accounted for 68 false mismatches with the 1985 catalogue. These have now been removed from my database.
Then I found a different 68 which were actually in the catalogue after all and had been missed by the OCR. Not too bad. To find those I’d had to manually search each one in the catalogue though, which was a bit of a chore. I also found two which were wrongly numbered in my list. These were probably wrong in Mike’s Collection list. Which left ten entries in my list which, as far as I can see, are not in the 1985 catalogue!
- EC 45G – Electronic Detection Devices / Telephone Confidence Tones
- EC 55G – Dental surgery – Drills
- EC 66G – Radio & Electrical Sounds
- EC 97J – Rome railway stations
- EC 133G – Coach & Four
- EC 146D – Warfare Vietnam 1969
- EC 177C – Lambretta scooter, 1965 (Exterior)
- EC 201A – Rural England
- EC 501D – Aircraft: Barracouda, Airspeed Oxford, Avro York
EC 195N – Would be the tenth but, there was a problem there. Although it was in my list it was not in my collection. A mistake in my listing. Not so much a problem as an annoyance. And EC 195M was also missing in reality. All useful in the end.
A couple of more interesting things I spotted.
EC 45G was hand-written into the catalogue on page 304 with ‘1986’ after it. Proving that it was after this 1985 catalogue beyond doubt.
Whilst EC 133G is not in the catalogue, ‘Coach and Four’ is there as EC 1010H. All the 1000 series are annotated “(From 78 Disc)”. Could this 1000 series be a reissue? For what it’s worth, EC133G was not in the 1971 catalogue, although a similar coach and horses EC133F was. That’s something to look into another time. As are the details of these discs and more thoughts about how many more might have come out after the 1985 catalogue.
Those missing scans (68) plus the post-1985 additions (9) plus the remaining catalogue entries which I had in my list already (1087), minus the stupid guesses I made, total 1164 mono EC catalogues discs in my list.
Fool’s Gold?
Now for the real gold! How many previously unknown mono EC records did I net after this trawl through the catalogue? A very ‘worthwhile the effort’ 158 new entries! And that’s before I get to the Stereo EC and Natural History NH catalogues too!
It’s surprising how many of those come from single digit catalogue prefix numbers (1-9). 46 including many from EC 1 and EC 2. Less surprising are the 1000 series cat numbers which represent 82 of the new entries. As I said above, these are all listed as copies from 78s and there’s a hint of a resissues in there too.
I don’t like surprises though. Those EC 1 and 2 are suspicious to me. Can I and Mike really have not had any of them? Stay tuned for that.
Stereo
The stereo list is much smaller and I only found 6 new (to me) entries, but I was less surprised to get a list of 81 cat numbers missing from the catalogue scan. I had suspected that as the stereo discs were the newer thing there’d be more coming out after 1985 than the mono discs, many of which were copies from 78s anyway.
I removed thirteen immediately as more silly guesses, and although 4M2 had been matched, it was actually false positive and there was no 4M2 after-all.
Meaning 13 to subtract. And then another 9 were really in the catalogue yet didn’t scan, so 60 possibles to go. This was a bit harder than with the mono EC’s as a lot of the records I was checking are in my list without a title. I can go and pull them out of my collection to check, but it’s warmer in here.
The results of that hunting through the physical catalogue was a bunch that I don’t think are in the catalogue, but which I still need to double check.
I totalled up 41 almost certainly not in the catalogue and 19 probably not, but need to check to be sure.
In this stereo lot I’ve indeed found way more records that post-date the catalogue than ones I was missing in my list. This suggests I will have to think there are more ECS stereo catalogue records still to find and add.
Some things of note with the stereo.s.
ECS 2D3 – ‘Dogs: Beagles’ was hand-written in on page 136. As was ECS 3T7 – ‘Steam Train Various’ on page 320, whilst 3T8 and 3T9 are not in at all, but I know exist – ~Steam Trains. Then ECS 1A18 and 19 – Lancaster Bomber also got added by hand (in green biro!). All these were counted as not in the catalogue. It begs the question are there other hand written entries I missed in the scan and are not in my list? Something else to get round to checking!
ECS 2W5 – ‘Rain with thunder’ is not in the catalogue and is an example of where you get a whole run, in this case 2W1, 2, 3 etc., but then there’s a gap in the middle. This shows that records were not always released in the same order as the cat. number sequence. Something to remember when I finally get round to the matrix numbers and perhaps need to guess if the dates are reliable.
Natural Story
Finally the Natural History catalogue.
I initially found 23 in my list but not in the catalogue and 10 new ones from the catalogue to add to my list. After checking those 23 it was clear that 20 of them, running from NH 114Z to 133Z are not in the 1985 catalogue. The first few I checked were not there and they all seem to be similar collections of birds. The other three I had already listed with no details, so they will need pulling out and examining.
Some Totals
Let’s total up then! My list – any silly guesses + Additions from the 1985 catalogue
- EC – 1235 – 68 + 158 = 1325
- ECS – 435 – 13 + 6 = 428
- NH – 128 + 10 = 138
- Total = 1,798 – 91 + 174= 1,891
That’s the new number, 1891. And I’ve added a net total of (174-91) 83, but I’ve really found 174 in the catalogue which were not in my list at all. It’s pretty clear that there’s potential for more to be found and added, still. Also, there might be a few I missed completely in the scan of the catalogue. Small chance there, but a definite possibility. For now though. it’s 1891, and at last count I have 1530 that are keepers in my collection. At least 361 shy of a full set. Something to aim for!
I now need to go back through the catalogue and match all these new cat numbers with what’s on them so that I can add them to my database. As long as they do exist… As well as pull out the ones that I couldn’t put a name to and need a double check if they are hiding in the catalogue. These winter nights will fly by…