HELP with SKATING TAPE ORGANIZATION

[AxelAnnie22]

I managed to spend another off-season avoiding anything that even looked like organizing the gazillions of tapes I have of skating.

I HAVE TO be organized this year. I want to keep track of competitions by competition, as well as some of the pairs, dance, ladies and men by skater.

Anybody have any ideas?

Do you take notes the first time you watch? Where/how do you keep track of your notes? How do you key your notes to your tapes?

When I looked at the upcoming schedule, I almost had a heart attack. I will be lucky just to WATCH it all.....what with catching up at work after I watch the Iskater webcasts (which I always say I
WON'T do.

Maybe we could team up?

Loveskating: could be in charge of jump content.
Dustin: Skaters/music
RACK: Competition: Judges and marks.
DH: Whatever.

Maybe we could have different groups for different competitions.

Also, I would love to get copies of the Canadian Coverage. I would be happy to trade the Flemming/Button American tapes.

As you can see, I need to get out more!! I would love any ideas.

[Meredith]

You may want to check Louis skating music database -- at least for your older tapes -- I don't know if he is planning to provide this service this season. Look here (http://home.earthlink.net/~louis17/index-music.html)

If Louis sees this, thank you, thank you, thank you!

[Star]

What I did was spend long hours going through all of my tapes and writing down what was on them, putting that in the cassette holder or whatever, then labeling the tape by event or type. Do it little by little, or until you can't take it anymore! :D
Do you have anything rare on tape??

[icenut84]

What I did was just watch through them one by one, writing down on a piece of paper the competition (and year), event (e.g. pairs), and list of skaters as they performed. You can fast forward through the performances to save time if you don't want to watch them. When you've got to the end of the tape, fold the paper and put it with the tape in the cardboard holder you put the tape in. Then write what competitions are on the tape onto a little label and stick it on the side. Do this for all of them and hey presto! Job done. :) And if you're REALLY bored, you can type up all the competition/event/skaters you've got on tape onto a Word document aswell and save it. This way you then know exactly what you've got at a glance, and can also search to see how many performances by skater X you've got, and whether you've got a particular programme. This will come in handy especially if you plan to trade tapes.

[AxelAnnie22]

Thanks for the info. I have now sorted by year. There is, unfortunately, very little I can force myself to fast forward to, so it will take me three or four years, I am sure. I am also starting to add to the face label, anything of note: e.g. Todd's Quad, or Outstanding Irina.

My ultimate intention is to copy the best things onto a "highlights" tape.

As to rare.......I don't know what you think would be rare. Let me know what you have in mind.

[skateflo]

a couple of other thoughts -

I first separated mine by year, then numbered them 1-400+

I took a basic spiral notebook and wrote the number of the tape and title, tape speed.
If their was something really special I usually had stuck a slip of paper in the tape box (could range from all the names of the performers to just a note about one special one.) I would add this to the notebook.

Between my long running magazine collection and the databases on the internet (especially home pages for elite skaters, thank you all who do it!) I figure I can find the various competitions that skater appeared in and just look through the notebook.

For example, when a skater in Scotland did not know the career of Oksana Baiul, I was able to use an internet database and pull all the tapes that had her performing. I was able to utilize 26 tapes to make one tape to send to him.

A friend of mine typed up her 2600 tapes with comments re names of performers, orig or traded tape, quality of tape, tape speed. She recently donated them all to a local skating club and they are constructing a library to house them and be available to all their skaters and coaches.

[AxelAnnie22]

WOW - thanks a lot. What great ideas. I have separated mine into years....but I have found that at times, in my haste to get the tape into the VCR, I have put the name of the competition on the tape, and not the year. I am now using the entire date on the spine of the tape (to eliminate confusion because the season actually spans both years.) Then on the face lable, I list the competitors in order. This is at least a start. I have a 12 foot table in my garage piled with about 1/2 of my tapes separated into seasons. At the moment I am just attempting to get this year logged and labeled. You certainly have a good cross reference going. Thanks again.