Does he want to store for reasons of ease of locating or for reasons of inspiring new patterns of listening?

I realise this is party-poopingly dull but boring old "alphabetically by artist", with albums in order of release really is the easiest way to keep things as far as I'm concerned.

itchy trigger finger - ignore.

....but the either pure and simple alphabetic, or alphabetic within genres, as few as feasible. Many say this is even too trainspotterly and that random is all you need, but once over 100 or so, it does become difficult to find individual choices otherwise. My "few as feasible" genres are rock, folk, jazz, country, r&b, pop, electronica/dance, reggae and world. That's probably too many, but there is no need at all to delve deeper sub-genre. If in doubt, go with your heart. (Note to uber rock snobs and super uber duber doo rock snobs, I use pop for groups I can never quite feel comfortable as calling rock, so Beach Boys and Beatles are, to me pop. The Rolling Stones I can happily call rock. It may even be an image thing.)

Gotta be genres for me. That's how I arrange my music and that's how I use my ipod. But it always gets messed up when soemone does a one off country album like Teddy Thompson did or they span several categoreis like Prince or Van Morrison. But on the whole it works because you know when your in the mood for some soul or some blues or some Peruvian orchestral noseflute music so you can go straight there.

Group in alphabetical order and have artists clustered but not in date order. Anything else gave me worries about the state of my personality. Works for me but then I only have 1,000 or so cds as downloading seems to have taken the brunt of my new music purchases. And a hard drive full of songs tagged right works best of all.

...there is of course no single right way to catalogue a collection, even for one individual. That's because you want different things at different times:
"I fancy hearing something by Cressida"
"I fancy something from the 60s"
"How about some reggae?"
"I'm in the mood for quirkiness"
"Surprise me"
and often
"I need to hear something bonchy" (where "bonchy" is an adjective of your own creation, and only you know what it means)

Then you sort your collection like this:
1) Go through them in any order you like
2) Give each a number
3) For each, capture in a (I can't believe I'm writing this!) spreadsheet any detail that you might want to use in future to select a record. That would certainly include title and artist, and probably date and genre. The clever bit though is that you can have columns for "sub-genre", "quirkyness", "bonchiness" or whatever terms you use to classify the collection in your head.
4) You can then use Sort and Filter to choose the music you want (e.g. show only items with "high" in the bonchiness column), look up the number and pull it out of the collection.
5) For "surprise me" you just generate a random number.

And if you want to emulate iTunes, while your at it you can even keep a count of how often you play each item.

How bonchy is that?

Only in the compilation arena, and that's a can of various artist worms as it is.

is that it's all very strictly organised, yet the effect of what follows what is totally random. How's about this for a playlist?

M.A.N.D.Y. vs. Booka Shade
Marley, Bob
Marmalade
M/A/R/R/S
Martin, Dean
Masekela, Hugh
Massive Attack
Matthews Southern Comfort
Mattea, Kathy
Maurice & Mac
Mayfield, Curtis
....

It's as easy as ABC...

P.S. Nik, can you point me in the direction of some good Peruvian noseflute; there's obviously a gap in my collection?

I have around 2,500 CDs (not counting the crap in the loft) and the basic split is UK / US divided between two racks of shelving. The UK section starts top left with the Beatles and their solo suff leading into the Stones (+ Jagger - yes I bought 'Goddess In A Doorway'!), the Who, Led Zeppelin (+ Page + Plant), Faces etc and on to the 70s (Roxy Music + Eno + Ferry), 80s etc. It seems to make sense to have McCartney next to the Beatles rather than beside Roger McGuinn (who is next to the Byrds over in the US section anyway) and to have Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe and Squeeze share a shelf.

The US lot starts with Hank Williams top left and follows the same idea, although I've just realised there is a small Canadian enclave with Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen and the Band nestling on the third shelf down.

World and jazz are in a different room, and the vinyl is upstairs but follows a similar principle, and always did.

It's a sort of chronology/genre/artist hybrid I suppose, but the best part is that while I can go straight to any CD, no-one else can find anything because there appears to be no logic.

I've begun to realise I may have given too much away here ....

I keeps my CDs stored in small cardboard boxes that I get free from the supermarket. Each box holds roughly 25 discs, depending on what the packaging is like.

When a box is full I write a number on the sides in permanent marker. I keep a record of the contents of each numbered box on excel. I also have a map showing me the location of each box in my room.

No genres. No alphabetical order. Just numbered boxes

I can locate any CD I own in seconds. It may not look pretty but it works.