Organising and Managing your DVD Collection

1. Organizing Your DVD Collection The first thing to consider when you decide to organize your collection is the system you use. This may include one of the following: - Alphabetical - Release Date - Genre - Director - General Star The most important thing thing to consider when deciding on the way you organize your collection is how it is stored. Put them in boxes it is probably better to organize by Genre rather than alphabetical order, if you then slotted shelves alphabetically can be a pain as you or any DVD in a notch move if you buy a new start " A ". If you have decided on the storage, it's time to go to the highest level categorization, then once you have selected the grading method, then you're going to be ordered by a sub-category (which could be one of the examples above)? What if DVDs are stored in multiple locations? Then it might be better to have no organization as such on the DVD itself, but rather a list of locations and approximately on the DVD's are in. Once you have selected your category, then hold. Differences subcategories within the main category contexts as you benefit from all the top-level organization will loose. So basically the workflow is: Storage Solution> Main Category> Sub Category *> * Track 2 if necessary. Keeping track of your DVD collection Once your DVD collection reaches a certain size can, and will be hard to remember what you have, who you borrowed and whether you bought the limited edition or standard DVD. This is where tracking tools come in. You can start with a simple list or a spreadsheet, a database or the use of various software / web tools available (see below). Example information that you could use (and this will depend on what tools you use for the job) could be: - Movie title (obviously!) - Director - Script Writer - Year - Height - Size (this can also Widescreen, 4: 3, or DVD region code etc.) - Cast (probably best to limit this to about 5 or so) - Comments - Rating - Date Purchased - cost (useful for keeping a running total for insurance purposes - you 'd be surprised how much it would cost to replace your collection) - - Purchased From - to Lent - Date Lent course not all this information sheet or can be further categories to add, just use what is relevant to you. 3. Store the information once you've decided what you want to store information about your DVDs then you can decide on the appropriate tool to use. Thus a simple spreadsheet can do if you want the movie title, director and stay who you lent to, but you would probably be better off with a database if you wanted something more complex record. If you are not a spreadsheet package on your computer (like Microsoft Excel, MS Works or Lotus) then I 'd recommend OpenOffice is a fantastic and free package easily rivals Microsoft Office. If you want an MS Access database and then use would work well (or the database that comes with Open Office 2), but if you want to get complicated you can always use MySQL as an alternative (using a web -based front-end). But again why build your own (like the Muppet that I am) when so many things already available that you download Covert art, running times etc when the item in your collection? Here are a few examples: Websites - DVD Affictionado * (I started using this before fiddling with my own views some of my collection here) - DVD Tracker - Software DVD Town - Movie Organizer (Windows) (Mac - version soon) - DVD Collector (Windows) - DVD Shelf (Mac) - Delicious Monster (Mac only?) - DVD Listing (Pocket PC) So, organizing your collection and never wonder who you borrowed that DVD again!