I've been building for a few years now, and I have a small collection of model magazines that dates back to mid-1998. I keep all the magazines I get for future reference, but recently it has turned into a problem, so I had to find a solution. The problem is that I know I have read an article on a particular subject, but when I go to look for it, I end up looking for a couple of hours through every one of my magazines for the article. It's a pain and it also takes away from building time. So I devised a away to archive all of my magazines on my computer.
I started with a Word document for each magazine. In each of the documents I have listed highlights from that particular mag., sort of like an extended, detailed table of contents. After completing all of the documents, I created a spreadsheet on Excel with the Title, Year, and Date of each magazine. I added a cell labeled Content also, in which I typed key words about that issue (aircraft names, etc.). With a hyperlink added to that cell, all I have to do is click on it to bring up the previously mentioned Word document. I have effectively created my own search engine. Now, using the "find" feature in Excel, all I have to do is a simple search for a keyword and the program directs me to a title. I can then look at the Word file to determine if I can use that article for reference. It takes a while to explain, takes a little longer to put together, but in the end, it is very much worth it. It has already saved me a lot of time so I can build instead of search.