I have been thru just about all of these ways since I started compiling songs in 1967 and the Digital Tradition became the answer for the large collection. I started with small spiral bound books and filled three of them and then the covers started coming off. At the same time I was in a few groups that sent monthly songsheets in their newsletters, so I started a 3 ring binder with songsheets, photocopies, and few typed (before the days of computers). Then I tried reinforcements on the pages. Then I tried plastic sheet protectors.

And then I saw Dennis Cook's 3 ring binder that was all full of computer generated pages and immediately saw that that was the answer. Dick did some thinking and programming and the Digital Tradition was born. I still have a problem with the songs I want to carry with me to sings. At some point this was a 3 ring binder and, like Bob Landry above, would give out the copy of the song to anyone who wanted it and note to reprint the page. I am not convinced that it is acceptable to sing from a computer. My current tiny subnotebook computer has a rotten battery, so I cannot really use it unplugged. In 1993 I printed out a subset of the DT to carry around and in 1995 I printed out all of our versions of Child ballads. I put these into docubind spiral combs, but the combs disintegrate after a while and the covers fray at the combs. But now that there are almost 8000 songs to review to select a subset I want to sing, I have put off the job of selecting the songs to print for a couple of years.