I use an excel sheet, access would be good as well.
If you are looking for something automated, I don't know of one. However, if you rip CD's to your harddrive with windows media player 9 on windows XP the albums are automatically organized and you can change the organization scheme. I have it set up so each artist has a folder and the albums are in individual subfolders. The artist folder automatically puts the album coverart on the folder, so you can see all the albums.
Sorry, thats all the help I can offer...