Looking for suggestion on how to organize a chest of photos, slides , negatives spanning 30 years

Hello all

I have a project to try and organize a chest of photos, negatives and slides
that I have accumulated over that last 30 years.
Currently I have a large chest that holds all the materials. There are
mainly 35MM colour negatives and prints. The negatives and prints are mainly
in the photo shops packing envelopes. Some of the choice photo prints have
been put into albums
I also have some 35 mm slides,black and white 35MM negatives and prints , I
also dabbled in the APS system for a short time and have about a dozen or so
packets. And a few dozen large 120 type negatives from my parents from the
1940's era.

My original thoughts are to get a few surplus filing cabinets to hold the
materials in manila folders but it sounds like that may not be a good idea
as most articles I've read some articles that suggest 3 ring binders and
special acid free materials.
I've also been looking for some sort of computer database software to index
everything and only found reference to one specific program for this purpose
called Camera Collector but it sounds like it may be more oriented towards
camera hardware not prints and negatives.

Any suggestions on a numbering scheme. Do I worry about filing things
chronologically. I'm thinking that a good index would make this unnecessary.
Any suggestions from some one who have been down this road would be
appreciated.


Articles I've been researching on this subject
http://www.stretcher.com/stories/04/04jan12b.cfm Organizing Photos and
Negatives
http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQueri...q-locale=en_US
Kodak suggestions
http://home.att.net/~jeffrey.d.mathi.../notebooks.htm numbering scheme

Brian