I love that Joe remembered the edge-notched sorting system I told him about and also really love Jeff's suggestion of getting spiral-bound cards and removing the spiral! I've drilled holes in index cards before as Joe described, but the results weren't clean.

I don't remember who I first heard about this sorting system from, but I recall that they said some well-known caller/choreographer organized his cards this way. Anyone know who this was? I've always wanted to rediscover this knowledge!

For my cards, I've only in the last year developed a system I'm happy with after a decade of prototyping:

First, my box is divided into five sections (I, II, III, IV, and V) according to difficulty. Dances in the I section are easiest and won't even include a courtesy turn. Sections II and III are my most-used; a typical regular dance evening will pull from these sections. IV is for tricky dances — you could get away with one or two at a regular dance with a competent crowd, or you could save them for Advanced Dance events. V is really wacky hard stuff. Advanced as it gets.
Second, each card has a colored sticker (something like these) to give a sense of the dance's disposition. Pink is very balance-y, orange is moderately balance-y, yellow is moderately smooth, green is very smooth. The important distinction here is that I'm not wed to how a particular bit of choreography should be danced (i.e., a band could successfully play a smooth tune to an orange-coded dance) but my coding does give a sense of where to look for certain moves: if I want petronellas, I look in the pink dances first.

The stickers are placed along the top edge of the cards and positioned according to difficulty, with dances in Section I having stickers on the left of that edge and dances in Section V toward the right. This makes sorting and identifying dances very easy.

Finally, within each colored section I alphabetize. Occasionally I know the name of a dance I'm looking for (though not always!) and in those cases I usually remember enough about the dance to guess where in my box it will be.

I've been really happy with this sorting system. Programming is easier. It means that if I need to change plans, I can select dances very quickly. It also means I can replace dances and re-sort my box at the end of the evening without trouble. I used removable stickers so that I could change my mind if needed, and this is the only thing I'd do differently so far; these stickers fall off too easily, even when folded over the top edge.

Bonus: My box looks like rainbow stripes from the top.

And another mechanic:

I always add a tally to the back of a card after I call it...

Regular at the top left, medley inclusion at the bottom
This allows me to turn my box around and select for favorites ("I need an old stand-by") or newly-collected ("I'm bored")

...and I also add dance titles to a google spreadsheet before I re-sort the cards back into their categories

What did I call last time I was at this dance? What worked and what didn't?
I can also pull an old program from a comparable event if I don't have time to program from scratch

On Wed, Jan 11, 2023 at 11:26 AM Michael Dyck via Contra Callers <contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:

On 2023-01-11 12:44 a.m., Joe Harrington via Contra Callers wrote:
>
> I heard recently (I believe from Angela DeCarlis) of a mechanical sorting
> system based on the Jacquard loom concept that became the Hollerith punched
> card system. I've never seen it in use. Does anyone do this?

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge-notched_card

[Ah, Jeff Kaufman beat me to it.]

> Figure out the ten or so characteristics you might want to sort on. For
> example, easy, medium, hard, bouncy, flowy, separates partners, sweetheart
> (keeps partners together), etc. Take a stack of cards and drill holes near
> the bottom edge, one per characteristic (you can drill a stack of cards if
> you sandwich them between wood and clamp them). Now, on a given card, punch
> out the rest of the paper between the hole and the edge of the card for each
> hole the card DOESN'T match.

Alternatively, you could punch out the margin when it *does* match (which
would probably be less work). Then in the selection procedure, the cards
that fall out (as opposed to the ones that stay on the needle) are the
selected ones.

> [...]
>
> Good hole alignment and clean punching would matter, I think. If you are a
> real dance sorting fanatic, you could get like 30 holes around the card
> edges, but that would limit the writing space.

Back when I was young and had lots of time (and no computer), I made a deck
of edge-notched cards to 'play' the game Mastermind:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastermind_(board_game)

(4 pegs of 6 possible colors, so 1296 cards, each with 24 holes and 4
notches.) As I recall, during the selection procedure, cards with a notch at
the selected hole (which *should* fall out) would sometimes 'stay on' the
needle just from friction with the neighboring cards. So I'd have to jostle
the deck a bit to shake those loose.

Also, V-shaped notches increased the chances that a card would fall out when
it should.

One way to avoid these problems is to have two opposite sets of holes, with
complementary notches. In the selection procedure, you use two needles,
placed in complementary holes, and you pull them apart to separate the cards
you want from the ones you don't.

-Michael
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