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